Carlo Palermo
Ed. Moments
pp. 100
Ribera, a small town in the province of Agrigento that was the birthplace of Francesco Crispi, and El Alamein, a small town along the coast of Egypt, have in common human affairs perhaps no longer remembered by everyone.
Emanuele Macaluso is one of the "points" of conjunction between these two points that are geographically so distant. Carlo Palermo is another of these ideal junctions.
Carlo Palermo, a passionate scholar of military history, with his book "From Sicily to El Alamein", tells us the story of his personal research in the footsteps of a military man from Ribera, one of the many soldiers of the Second World War, one of many fallen in the land of Africa, Emanuele Macaluso.
A case, perhaps, wanted to make them meet ideally and from this meeting was born a beautiful book, which I had the pleasure of reading, all in one breath.
In the book the ghosts of the War meet, famous names like Rommel and Churchil and Mussolini alternate with those, perhaps less famous but no less important, of Emanuele Macaluso, Gaetano Serio, Leccis, Chiodini, Paolo Caccia Dominioni ... names that they can still find engraved in a tombstone in memory of a battle in the lands burned by the sun of Egypt.
This book tells the story, that of the Second World War, with its ugliness, with its deaths and deaths, but also that war which saw young boys from all over the world perform acts of heroic homeland on both sides.
Emanuele Macaluso was born in Ribera in March of the 1920 and died a stone's throw from Alessandria, after having participated with his department, the glorious 8 ° bersaglieri regiment framed in the division Ram, employed in operations in Africa under the command of the German general Rommel, the desert fox.
Emanuele arrives in Tripoli in the 1941. We can almost imagine, reading the book, the places, the feelings of the military, their fears, the pain of the death of their fellow soldiers, the suffering of their wounds, but also the sense of belonging, the spirit of body, the heroic actions, the effort made by departments not always well armed, indeed, sometimes absolutely unprepared to face a war campaign in desert territory. Through letters to parents and memories of those who knew him and thanks to the wise pen of Carlo Palermo, Emanuele Macaluso almost comes back to life.
It is he who tells us how things went down there, it is he who introduces us to his comrades in arms, it is always he who encourages us, it is he who tells us of death under the bombardment of British planes, together with the surviving military of the 8 ° regiment, the 6 July of the 1942, in the Whiska area, a few kilometers from El Alamein, "the two flags", which ideally greet him.
Rommel said: "The German soldier has astonished the world, the Italian bersagliere has surprised the German soldier", from reading pages of History like these we can understand the deeper meaning.
Thanks Emanuele, for what you did.
Thanks Carlo, because your book reminds us who we are.
Alessandro Rugolo
