Paolo Caccia Dominioni

Paolo Caccia Dominioni, 14th Baron of Sillavengo (Italian pronunciation: [ˈpaːolo ˈkattʃa domiˈnjoːni]; 14 May 1896 – 12 August 1992) was an Italian soldier, officer in the Alpini mountain Infantry Corps, engineer and writer, most noted for his leadership in the North Africa Campaign in World War II.

He was the son of Carlo (seventeenth count of Sillavengo; a diplomat) and Bianca (a marquise; maiden name, Cusani-Confalonieni).

During his engineer's career in prewar Egypt, he developed a deep friendship with the Belgian expatriate Vladimir Peniakoff, later to be known as Popski (the creator and leader of a World War II Special Forces unit called Popski's Private Army ("No 1 Demolition Squadron, PPA") with whom he had explored the Egyptian desert; a few years later the two friends would be facing each other as enemies, in Libya, in World War II.

Field Marshall Erwin Rommel personally awarded him the Iron Cross, 2nd Class for his actions during the First Battle of El Alamein.

Caccia Dominioni devoted his postwar career to the retrieving of soldiers' corpses still on the Alamein battlefield and to the design and construction of a cemetery and a memorial building, located on a particular spot on the Alamein battleground named "Hill 33" where – thanks to his twenty years of efforts – thousands of Italian, German and British unknown fallen soldiers, were eventually identified and received a proper burial.