PHOTOS: Larry Bentley
A SMALL group of members of the Fort Pearson MOTH Shellhole last week commemorated the battle immortalised in the words of Sir Winston Churchill.
He summed up the Second Battle of El Alamein on 10 November 1942 with the words: ‘This is not the end, it is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning’.
The batle took place over 20 days from 23 October to 11 November 1942 near the Egyptian coastal city of El Alamein.
The Allies’ victory marked a major turning point in the Western Desert Campaign of the Second World War.
The First Battle of El Alamein had stalled the Axis advance into Egypt, after which, in August 1942, Lieutenant-General Bernard Montgomery had taken command of the British Eighth Army from General Claude Auchinleck.
This victory by the Allies turned the tide in the North African Campaign and ended the Axis threat to Egypt, the Suez Canal, and of gaining access to the Middle Eastern and Persian oil fields via North Africa.
Psychologically, El Alamein revived the morale of the Allied side, being the first major offensive against the Germans since the start of the European war in 1939 in which the Western Allies achieved a decisive victory.
The defeated Rommel, however, did not lose hope until the end of the Tunisia Campaign.
After three years the African theatre was cleared of Axis forces and the Allies could look northward to the Mediterranean.
El Alamein was Montgomery’s greatest triumph from which he took the title ‘Viscount Montgomery of Alamein’ when he was raised to the peerage after the war.
The Allies’ victory was all but total.
Axis casualties of 37 000 amounted to over 30% of their total force, while the 13 500 Allied losses were by comparison a remarkably small proportion of their total force.
