Santoro Calcara was born in 1920 in Mazara del Vallo, Provincia di Trapani, Sicilia, Italy. He resided in Wayne County, Michigan prior to the war. He is noted as a lodger at 2675 Scott Street, Detroit, Michigan in the 1940 census. He enlisted in the Army on October 23, 1941, prior to the war, in Detroit, Michigan. He was noted, at the time of his enlistment, as being employed as a Machinist and also as Single, without dependents. Santoro served as a Technician Fifth Grade, Headquarters Detachment, Office of Strategic Service, U.S. Army during World War II.

Santoro, while on a mission with 14 other soldiers serving with the OSS in Italy, became a POW of the German Army. On an order signed by General Anton Dostler, head of the 75th German Army Corps, they were to be executed. Santoro, along with the others, were "executed" by the German Army and hidden in a mass grave in an area of Bocca di Magra, with no houses at the time, and they camouflaged the grave site. General Kesselring, Commander in Chief of German forces in Italy, ordered all written records of the affair destroyed. However after the war information was gathered from local Italians and then German Army personnel and the grave was located.

Source of information: www.findagrave.com