el
alamein fountain
( placed in
operation 18 11 61 )
In July 1942, General
Erwin Rommel and
the Italo-German Panzer Armee Afrika, (part of the
Deutsches Afrika Korps)
were only 113km (70 miles) from Alexandria. The situation was so serious
that Winston Churchill
made the long journey to Egypt
to discover for himself what needed to be done. Churchill decided to make
changes to the command structure. General
Harold Alexander
was placed in charge of British land forces in the Middle East and
Bernard Montgomery
became commander of the Eighth Army.
On 30th August, 1942,
Erwin Rommel
attacked at Alam el Halfa but was repulsed by the Eighth Army. Montgomery
responded to this attack by ordering his troops to reinforce the defensive
line from the coast to the impassable Qattara Depression. Montgomery was now
able to make sure that Rommel and the
German
Army
was
unable to make
any further advances into
Egypt.
Over the next six weeks Montgomery began to stockpile vast quantities of
weapons and ammunition to make sure that by the time he attacked he
possessed overwhelming firepower. By the middle of October the Eighth Army
totalled 195,000 men, 1,351 tanks and 1,900 pieces of artillery. This
included large numbers of recently delivered
Sherman M4 and
Grant M3
tanks.
On 23rd October Montgomery launched Operation Lightfoot with the largest
artillery bombardment since the
First World War.
The attack came at the worst time for the
Deutsches Afrika Korps
as Erwin Rommel
was on sick leave in Austria. His replacement, General
George Stumme,
died of a heart-attack the day after the 900 gun bombardment of the German
lines. Stume was replaced by General Ritter von
Thoma and
Adolf Hitler
phoned Rommel to order him to return to Egypt
immediately.
The Germans defended their positions well and after two days the Eighth Army
had made little progress and
Bernard Montgomery
ordered an end to the attack. When
Erwin Rommel
returned he launched a counterattack at Kidney Depression (27th October).
Montgomery now returned to the offensive and the 9th Australian Division
created a salient in the enemy positions.
Winston Churchill was disappointed by the Eighth Army's lack of success and
accused Montgomery of fighting a "half-hearted" battle. Montgomery ignored
these criticisms and instead made plans for a new offensive, Operation
Supercharge.
On 1st November 1942, Montgomery launched an attack on the
Deutsches Afrika
Korps at Kidney Ridge. After initially resisting the attack, Rommel decided
he no longer had the resources to hold his line and on the 3rd November he
ordered his troops to withdraw. However,
Adolf Hitler
overruled his commander and the Germans were forced to stand and fight.
The next day Montgomery ordered his men forward. The Eighth Army broke
through the German lines and
Erwin Rommel, in
danger of being surrounded, was forced to retreat. Those soldiers on foot,
including large numbers of Italian soldiers, were unable to move fast enough
and were taken prisoner.
For a while it looked like the the British would cut off Rommel's army but a
sudden rain storm on 6th November turned the desert into a quagmire and the
chasing army was slowed down. Rommel, now with only twenty tanks left,
managed to get to Sollum on the Egypt-Libya border.
On 8th November
Erwin Rommel
learned of the Allied invasion of Morocco and Algeria that was under the
command of General
Dwight D.
Eisenhower.
His depleted army now faced a war on two front.
The British
Army recaptured
Tobruk
on 12th November, 1942. During the El Alamein campaign half of Rommel's
100,000 man army was killed, wounded or taken prisoner. He also lost over
450 tanks and 1,000 guns. The British and Commonwealth forces suffered
13,500 casualties and 500 of their tanks were damaged. However, of these,
350 were repaired and were able to take part in future battles.
Winston Churchill was convinced that the battle of El Alamein marked the
turning point in the war and ordered the ringing of church bells all over
Britain. As he said later: "Before Alamein we never had a victory, after
Alamein we never had a defeat."
