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00:00This land was made for war.
00:18As glass resists the bite of vitriol, so this hard and calcined earth rejects the battle's
00:24hot corrosive impact.
00:35Here is no nubile, girlish land.
00:38No green and virginal countryside for war to violate.
00:43This land is hard, inviolable.
01:13This land is hard, inviolable.
01:43Benito Mussolini declares war on France and Britain.
02:13Like some latter-day Roman consul, Mussolini longed for an African empire.
02:27Already he had massacred the Abyssinians and subjugated the Libyans.
02:30Now he wanted more.
02:37We were certainly not ready to go to war in 1940.
02:42It was purely a political move of Mussolini, who felt that Hitler was winning too much
02:48too quickly and that if he didn't sort of make some sort of gesture, take some sort
02:52of initiative, he would not be able to sit at the conference table.
03:10Mussolini's eyes were on Egypt, the Egypt of the Nile and the Suez Canal.
03:19In autumn 1940, he poured a quarter of a million troops into Egypt's neighbour, Libya, and
03:25another 300,000 into Ethiopia.
03:28Placing them in Egypt were just 30,000 British soldiers of the Western Desert Force.
03:58On September 13th, 1940, when the battle for Britain was at its height, Mussolini's men
04:03set out to conquer Egypt.
04:15Completely outnumbered, the British troops simply fell back.
04:24After four days, Mussolini's men were to reach Sidi Barani, 60 miles inside Egypt.
04:30There they would stop, still 300 miles short of Cairo.
04:37Looking back now, it seems an extraordinary thing, how we moved into Egypt by sending
04:42out these enormous columns, not very well protected because we didn't have any tanks,
04:49and then each one of them settling down in a sort of fortified camp.
05:00This helped, of course, General O'Connor, I think, a lot.
05:04General O'Connor, the British commander, had used the pause to plan a counter-attack.
05:08The Italians had a series of these fortified perimeter camps, and we decided that as they
05:16were so far apart, they would be unable to support each other, and we moved our troops
05:22round to attack them from the rear, the way that their rations would come.
05:37O'Connor undertook an operation which was due to last about four days, which was the
05:41limit for the available tanks, which were nearly worn out, and for our administration
05:46in terms of supplying water and fuel and ammunition.
05:51He achieved complete surprise, got behind the Italian positions at Sidi Barani, and
05:55in the morning, the Italian resistance collapsed.
06:20O'Connor's great achievement was that by using captured vehicles and captured dumps
06:26of water and fuel, he was able to maintain this four-day battle into what became an offensive
06:34lasting over a period of weeks, and resulted in taking him as far as Benghazi and indeed
06:39beyond to El Agheila.
06:44An area the size of England and France had been captured.
06:47For the British, it was an unbelievable victory and marvellously opportune, for back home
06:52the Blitz was mounting in ferocity.
06:54For Mussolini, a mere six months after entering the war, the defeat meant the pricking of
07:00his imperial pretensions.
07:03Mussolini had said, I want 1,000 Italian dead to be able to sit at the conference table,
07:09and of course it cost many more than that.
07:21Two hundred thousand Italians were taken prisoner.
07:34They'd had enough.
07:36In many cases, they were very, very happy to surrender.
07:40To think that we were vastly outnumbered, and to see one Tommy taking literally thousands
07:47back to the POW cage, was a great joy for us to see.
07:53We used to call them gentlemen, there go the gentlemen.
07:57Tripoli, Libya's capital, was in O'Connor's grasp, but Churchill withdrew the cream of
08:04O'Connor's forces to meet the Nazi threat in Greece.
08:07We couldn't do Greece and Tripoli at the same time, that's quite clear.
08:13I say we could have done Tripoli immediately, and still left the options open for Greece.
08:20We lost an enormous opportunity to finish up North Africa, and it was a fatal error
08:25to have gone to Greece.
08:27If we had advanced immediately, we could have pushed him out.
08:33I entirely blame myself for not having done it.
08:35I think it was quite inexcusable.
08:37I ought to have.
08:39February the 12th, 1941.
08:44Hitler comes to Mussolini's rescue.
08:47A small mobile force that had been hurriedly put together, sets sail to Tripoli.
08:56The force that was soon to be renowned as the Afrika Korps.
09:10The task of the German Afrika Army was only to tie down as many British troops as possible,
09:20and to cover the southern flank of Europe.
09:25We had never the intention to conquer Egypt or to cross the Suez Canal.
09:36Man Hitler chose to save Mussolini from further disaster had made his name in France the summer
09:41before, Erwin Rommel.
09:49In the port of Tripoli in February, March 1941, Rommel told my friend, Lieutenant Hund,
10:02an engineer, Hund, here you can build me 150 tanks.
10:09The man looked stupefied, and Rommel told him, don't you have timber here in the harbour
10:15and canvas of sails to make 150 covers for Volkswagen, so you can give me 150 tanks?
10:23And those tanks misled the British.
10:28Rommel as yet knew nothing about desert warfare, but he was bold and daring.
10:33Rommel was perhaps the ideal commander for the Swab theater.
10:38It was very wide in area, but very limited in numbers of soldiers, and so he could apply
10:46practically naval tactics.
10:50Towns and cities were very few, and therefore we had no difficulties with the Arabian population.
10:59They didn't disturb us.
11:04The very same evening the Afrika Korps arrived, they were ordered to the front.
11:11Rommel believed in attack, and quickly.
11:19On the last day of March, when not all the troops promised him had even landed in Africa,
11:26he took on the British at El Agheila, and in just 12 days pushed them back the 500 miles
11:33to Egypt.
11:34It was as if the bogeyman was just round the corner, it was, here comes Rommel, or Rommel's
11:41coming down the desert fast, get the hell out of it.
11:46Now it was the British turn to be taken prisoner in their thousands.
11:54Rommel told me to go ahead, and we reached Derna, picking up on our way English soldiers
12:09and generals who came in one by one, amongst them the famous General O'Connor.
12:16It was miles behind our own front. We drove into the one bit of the desert in which the
12:20Germans had sent a reconnaissance group. It was a great shock, and I never thought
12:26it could ever happen to me. Very conceited, perhaps.
12:31And so the Rommel legend took shape. By mid-April, he had driven the British back where they
12:36had started, but one pinprick remained, to Brook.
12:43A hundred miles behind the front, its Australian garrison held out, denying Rommel the chance
12:51of a precious forward port for his supplies. As long as Tobruk remained in British hands,
12:59it threatened Rommel's supply lines and deterred him from advancing any further into Egypt.
13:08Unable to take Tobruk by direct assault, Rommel prepared to besiege it.
13:14The Luftwaffe too were called in.
13:35Over a thousand raids were mounted against Tobruk.
13:45Right under Rommel's nose, the Royal Navy replaced the Tobruk garrison with fresh troops.
13:53Poles, South Africans, Indians, British.
13:58It was bare ashes in Tobruk, although one must thank the Navy, as they did a wonderful
14:04job.
14:10In 1941, the Royal Navy ruled the Mediterranean. They had done so since giving the powerful
14:17Italian fleet a bloody nose at Taranto the previous autumn. And so the British convoys
14:22could make their way through the Mediterranean relatively unmolested.
14:26More importantly, operating from Malta, the Royal Navy could harass Rommel's own convoys
14:31passing from Italy to Tripoli.
14:39The British supplies got through, while Rommel's didn't.
15:10Denied the petrol necessary for his panzers, Rommel couldn't advance any further into Egypt
15:15that summer.
15:17And worse, no matter how hard he tried, Rommel couldn't take Tobruk.
15:22It remained a thorn in his side and became too a symbol of British doggedness every bit
15:26as much as Churchill's bulldog face.
15:29We were pestered with layering loudspeakers on the perimeter. We were called the self-imposed
15:36prisoners of Tobruk. Rommel's propaganda machine bellowed at us to give up. Well, we just took
15:44no notice. We said, we'll stick it out. We knew that they couldn't get in.
15:58There'd been no light at the end of the tunnel at all since the withdrawal from Dunkirk.
16:03I think for political and, above all, for morale reasons, the morale of the people of
16:08this country, it was terribly important to show that we could hold the Germans.
16:14The desert war for the moment was in stalemate, a time for taking stock of tactics as well
16:19as supplies. Rommel's tactics were more effective than those of the British, especially in his
16:23use of tanks.
16:26We had been trained to fire on the move, to execute the sort of cavalry charge on tracks
16:33and handle armour in that way. The Germans had studied this problem much more than we
16:40between the wars. And also, of course, Rommel had experience from northern France, and so
16:45had many of his tank crews. And they appreciated that a tank's best action against his enemy
16:51is to wait for him to come on, sitting in a hull-hidden position. If they're caught
16:56in the open, to decoy the enemy onto their own anti-tank gun lines.
17:10Rommel's main anti-tank weapon was the Krupp-made 88mm. It had decimated the French tanks in
17:17May 1940, and was doing the same now to the British tanks.
17:21It was effective at 1,000 yards and over. It could pinpoint you, zero into you, and
17:27it would brew a tank up easily.
17:34They could shoot at us before we could even get within striking distance. We couldn't
17:38hope to hit them with the two-pounders or the six-pounders.
17:45Rommel not only had the edge on the British in tactics and equipment, he also enjoyed
17:49the confidence of his political chief, Hitler. Wavell, his opposite number, was continually
17:54being pressured by Churchill to provide a victory. When he didn't, he was replaced
17:59by General Sir Claude Auchinleck. The Auch, in turn, appointed as his commander in the
18:04field, Lieutenant General Cunningham. Cunningham had defeated the Italians in East Africa,
18:10and put back Haile Selassie on the throne of Abyssinia. But he was an infantryman and
18:15knew nothing about tanks. The tank held the key to success in the desert, but British
18:20tanks left much to be desired.
18:23They were very poor, mechanically.
18:26There was parts missing, parts not connected properly.
18:31Unlike the Germans, the British had few tank transporters, so their tanks had to move long
18:36distances as well as fight on their tracks.
18:40Every track is connected to the next track by a pin, a lot of moving parts, which, in
18:46the desert, was sometimes powdery, but hard, gritty sand. Well, water is a lubricant, and
18:55a tank track is best suited to muddy conditions.
19:01To Churchill, the desert war had been too long in Stalemate. He needed victory, especially
19:07after the humiliating failures in Greece and Crete. No sooner were Cunningham and Auchinleck
19:12appointed than they too were pressured into an offensive.
19:16The British now had more equipment, but their tactics hadn't changed. Rommel might well
19:36have been tempted to echo Willington's words, they came on in the same old way, and we stopped
19:41them in the same old way.
19:47In just five days that November, Cunningham lost 300 tanks, two-thirds of his force, many
19:52through mechanical failure.
19:54Say your track came off and jammed, well, if you were in action, you couldn't do anything
20:00about it but bail out. Then you couldn't recover the tank. At that time in the desert, we had
20:06no means of recovery of tanks.
20:09You'd always leave the battleground. Jerry's, they used to seem to stay there. We might
20:17have had a successful day, but Jerry's always seemed to deny us the battlefield.
20:23Their equipment had to come equally as far as ours, but they seemed to value it more
20:28and did every effort to recover their tanks as soon as it got dusk.
20:35By bluff and guile, Rommel convinced Cunningham he had lost the battle, but Auchinleck was
20:40determined to stay put. He sacked Cunningham, who wanted to withdraw, and appointed Ritchie.
20:46The gamble to stay and fight came off.
20:57When defeat stared the British in the face, the battle's balance swung dramatically their
21:02as Rommel's panzers ran out of fuel.
21:05To Brooke was relieved. Rommel was forced to withdraw the 500 miles back to his starting
21:10point, and on Christmas Eve 1941, Benghazi changed hands for the third time.
21:17But with Commonwealth forces again poised to push the Axis out of Africa, they were
21:21once more denuded of troops and equipment, this time for the Far East, where Japan's
21:25entry into the war threatened British bases in Burma and Malaya.
21:30An opportunity of gaining something which was rare and important in the Middle Eastern
21:38theatre was lost for the sake of something which was very doubtful and unlikely to pay
21:49off in the Far East.
21:52Within a couple of weeks, Rommel counterattacked.
22:01Against the weakened British forces, he recaptured Benghazi, and once more threatened to Brooke.
22:07He was stopped at Gazala. Once again, it was stalemate.
22:31The peculiar conditions of the desert bred a comradeship that was unique in the whole war.
22:36To many, the desert war was a private war, the last to retain any pretense of chivalry.
22:48As soon as we stopped and there was a lull and a rest, he'd clear off a patch of the
22:53desert and say, right now we'll have a game of football.
22:57The sportsmanship showed that both sides' football games were not interrupted by artillery
23:04fire during certain periods.
23:09The staple diet was biscuits and bully beef.
23:13We had bully beef fried, bully beef boiled, bully beef with dog biscuits.
23:19Oh, and dog biscuits. Dogs we didn't eat, and dogs we refused to eat them.
23:25With food a problem and fresh water scarce, dysentery was a constant danger.
23:33The Germans invented a water can, which the envious English, after seeing theirs burst
23:38countless times on the bumpy desert surfaces, copied and christened the jerry can.
23:44We were rationed at one stage there on a cup of water a day, to bathe, shave.
23:50What often happened was the sections collected their ration, put it into a helmet,
23:55and each one shaved out of that.
23:58Above all, it was hot. Very, very, very hot.
24:04It was so hot you could throw an egg on the mudguard of a war.
24:08It's literally true, you could break an egg on the outside.
24:11It was so hot it would sizzle.
24:14The fly was perhaps the desert soldier's greatest scourge.
24:18Not just as a nuisance, but as a carrier of disease.
24:21Flies were indifferent, of course, as to which side they played.
24:24At one stage there, there were competitions as to who killed the most flies.
24:29The flies were that fattened with living on the dead,
24:34that every time you killed them, the smell got into you
24:38and caused the stomach uproar.
24:40The smell got into you and caused stomach upsets,
24:43and we had orders from division headquarters to cut out this business of killing the flies.
24:48We just had to let them go.
24:52I think one fly has, within one year, nine million children.
25:01There was, too, the occasional scorpion and viper.
25:04And when the wind blew, the sand and dust got in everywhere.
25:11The fine dust used to clog up everything.
25:15The jets would clog up in the carburettors.
25:18Your watches would stop.
25:20It created problems with our intestines.
25:23It gives a form of diarrhoea, which is very severe because of the sand passing through.
25:29You had, for instance, to go from your quarters to the latrine,
25:33and you had literally to do it with a march compass.
25:37There are cases where soldiers did not return when they had forgotten their march compass.
25:44In the sandstorm, of course, the fighting stopped, which was enjoyed at the beginning.
25:49After three days, you think, the better the sandstorm stops and the fighting starts again.
25:58Ritchie planned an offensive for the end of May with his new ground tanks from America,
26:03but Rommel, as usual, got in first.
26:05Ritchie had learned little from previous mistakes.
26:08Like the Italians, he had set up a series of fortified camps and laid mines galore.
26:13But just as O'Connor had done with the Italians, Rommel simply went round the open flank.
26:19We were down south, just in front of Birken,
26:23and during the morning, we'd seen this dust going up where Jerry was.
26:29He was coming through where the 7th Army was.
26:32He was coming through where the 7th Army div were.
26:36It was like a fox in a hen coop.
26:38Everybody dashed and battled all over the place.
27:02Ritchie's new tanks were proving a disappointment.
27:06Once again, the British armour was outmanoeuvring.
27:09The Battle of Gazala was Rommel's.
27:24The way was now open to the prize that had eluded Rommel the previous summer,
27:28the prize that Churchill, for one, had determined ever to deny him, Tobruk.
27:41Tobruk's fortifications had been neglected.
27:44They were no longer as formidable as they had been the previous summer.
27:59Berlin Radio broadcast the news of Tobruk's surrender.
28:02For Churchill, it was a particularly dark moment.
28:05For Rommel, the peak of his career and a grateful Führer made him Field Marshal.
28:14The German army was on its way to Tobruk,
28:17but it was too late.
28:19It was too late.
28:21It was too late.
28:23Test on Tobruk.
28:31The British now fell back into Egypt, further than ever before.
28:36I've never seen such chaos.
28:38You'd never be able to save a situation.
28:41I've never seen that desert road crammed with every sort of vehicle,
28:45every unit muddled up, hicklety-picklety.
28:48No-one knew what was going on.
28:51And, luckily, our air force was stronger than the enemy's at that time,
28:55otherwise I think we'd be rutted.
29:00The state of despair had to be masked,
29:04and it was masked in a typically British way by nonchalance.
29:08When Rommel was expected in Cairo that evening,
29:12Lord Killard, my ambassador,
29:14instantly gave dinner for 80 people at the Muhammad Ali Club
29:19and said, well, when he comes down, he'll know where to find us.
29:24Past Mirza Matruh, past Martin Baghouj, past Foucault, past Darbar.
29:29The British fell back until, on June 30th, 1942,
29:34they reached a railway halt just 60 miles from Alexandria,
29:38El Alamein.
29:49It was no chance choice of Auchinleck's
29:52that the decisive battle for Egypt should be fought here at El Alamein.
30:04This bit of desert was not like any other
30:07over which the war had been fought these last two years.
30:10As always, the sea was to the north,
30:13but here, just 40 miles inland, was another sea.
30:17The sunken sea of quicksand and salt marsh.
30:20Impassable to tanks.
30:23The Qatara Depression.
30:28Until now, the fluid strategy of desert warfare
30:31had sprung from there being always an open flank,
30:34but at Alamein, Rommel would have to think of something different.
30:42Auchinleck prepared for the final battle of the day
30:45for the final battle for Egypt,
30:47for after Tobruk, he had sacked Ritchie
30:49and taken command of the Eighth Army himself.
30:56But Churchill was already planning to sack him too.
30:59Rommel didn't wait for Churchill's decision.
31:02He threw his tired troops into a last desperate attempt to take Egypt.
31:07July.
31:09In perhaps the most decisive battle of the desert war,
31:12Auchinleck halted him.
31:15It was a rightfully important battle,
31:18and it was touch and go that we might have lost a whole of the Middle East base.
31:37Churchill went to see for himself in August the troops' morale.
31:41Tobruk's fall had exasperated him,
31:44but he was heartened by the reception he got from the Eighth Army.
31:48He had already decided to appoint Alexander in place of Auchinleck.
31:52The new Eighth Army commander was to be Montgomery,
31:55although Montgomery had not set foot in the desert during the war.
31:59When Montgomery came, we were a bit apprehensive about him
32:03because we'd never seen this man who had white knees and what have you.
32:08In the presence of your PM suddenly, it was a very tonic thing.
32:12He was wearing a siren suit, smoking an immense cigar,
32:15but he had WC on his slippers.
32:17He was wearing those old-fashioned dancing pumps
32:19that you used to wear in those days with dinner jackets,
32:22with W on one foot and C on the other.
32:25And he gave us a very good pep talk.
32:34MUSIC
32:42For Rommel, the lords of desert warfare now began to work against him.
32:47The further the advance, the longer the supply line.
32:51I think we had crossed the Rubicon, like Caesar,
32:56when we went to Egypt.
33:00The eyes of Hitler were directed every day to the Russian front,
33:06the deciding front.
33:08And our role was not so important.
33:12He was content if we had no difficulties,
33:16but he was not able to guarantee
33:20that supplies came to North African ports.
33:26EXPLOSIONS
33:33Only one in four of Rommel's supply ships ever got through.
33:37His solution, late in the day, crush Malta.
33:42EXPLOSIONS
33:53Göring's Luftwaffe believed it could annihilate the island single-handed.
34:00SIREN BLARES
34:11EXPLOSIONS
34:19Stukas, Heinkels, Junkers, Dorniers, Messerschmitts,
34:23day in, day out, hundreds at a time, were ordered against the island.
34:27Malta became the most bombed place on earth.
34:30EXPLOSIONS
34:41EXPLOSIONS
34:58Malta held out.
35:07EXPLOSIONS
35:11Equally bad for Rommel, the desert air force could now operate
35:14from its home bases along the Nile, just 100 miles behind the line.
35:19In the desert, the fighting is characterised
35:23by the opposition of tanks in large quantities,
35:28of artillery, of air support.
35:34Air support, for instance, didn't play a considerable role in Russia,
35:39where troops had enough cover.
35:43In Africa, air superiority was all decisive.
35:49EXPLOSIONS
35:52Montgomery had air superiority.
35:55Desperately short of fuel, Rommel's convoys had to run the gauntlet,
35:58the 1,400 miles from its main base at Tripoli,
36:01whereas Montgomery was only 60 miles from his at Alexandria.
36:05The distance from the ports, Benghazi, Tripoli and perhaps Tobol,
36:11had become too big.
36:15During the jigsaws up and down the desert,
36:18when we pushed Rommel back,
36:21we used to accuse him of putting oil in the wells,
36:24which we thought was really a dirty trick.
36:26And then when we came back down,
36:28he would blame us for putting oil in the water.
36:31And now it seems that all the time it was the oil wells below the ground
36:35seeping through into the water well.
36:39In September, the morale of the Afrika Korps was dealt a blow
36:42when Rommel fell ill.
36:44Hitler ordered him home.
36:47But his men were left behind under the desert sun for a second year.
36:55When you are in the desert, you feel like a man on the moon would feel.
36:59You are alone with the universe.
37:03For the men of the Afrika Korps, far from home there was no question of leave,
37:07only the certainty that sooner or later the British would attack them.
37:12There was the homesickness of the soldier
37:14who would have preferred to be at home and not at war.
37:17Vor der Kaserne, vor dem großen Tor,
37:21stand eine Laterne und steht sie noch davor.
37:26It was perhaps no accident that the desert campaign
37:29produced the most memorable song of the Second World War.
37:34Lili Marlene was a piece of our home.
37:39Die einst Lili Marlene
37:45Lili Marlene became equally popular with the British.
37:52We were always in touch with home.
37:55We heard the news, and of course we heard the opposition's news,
37:59their witness underneath the lamppost by the barrack gate.
38:08Lili Marlene, my old Lili Marlene
38:13For the British, home comforts were close at hand in Cairo,
38:17just the place for a spot of leave with its bars, bazaars and other distractions.
38:38They used to take your money, yes.
38:48I should say 75% of them,
38:52if they could find another woman, they'd have her.
38:59It really was weird when you think of the whole of Europe blacked out
39:03and in darkness and despair, you know.
39:06In Cairo, seething with light, you rang up people,
39:09you went out to dinner, you had a hot bath and a whisky and so on,
39:12and Monday morning you'd be back in the line.
39:17Montgomery saw his main task as raising the troops' morale.
39:20He was the first British commander to project himself like an American politician.
39:25Pressmen, particularly press photographers,
39:27kept at arm's length by Wavell and Auchinleck,
39:30now found themselves welcome.
39:33He immediately, as quick as possible,
39:35started going round all the formations of the Eighth Army
39:38and gathering people round to talk to them,
39:41and he used also the press, the radio and gimmicks such as his hat.
39:48They wanted something to be able to identify themselves with and to look at,
39:53something other than the strict uniform.
40:02It really was remarkable.
40:04In three or four days there was a completely different atmosphere in the Eighth Army
40:07and there was a feeling of confidence.
40:09He told us that the bad old days were over
40:12and he was now determined there was going to be success.
40:16He said, now the only order is everyone stays where they are
40:20and fights where they are and dies where they are.
40:32Montgomery saw to it that his army had the very latest weapons.
40:36Constantly pressed by Churchill to take the offensive,
40:38Monty, as he was soon known, was not going to be rushed.
40:42He was determined, as he put it,
40:44to have everyone tough and hard for the coming battle.
40:50Because its first few hours were going to be dominated by the mine,
40:53the Germans had laid well over half a million of them,
40:56the offensive was given the code name Operation Lightfoot.
40:59A perfect joke, if ever there was one.
41:03An electronic mine detector had been devised for use at Alamein,
41:06but many were found to be faulty on arrival
41:08and so most of the detecting had to be done in the old way,
41:11by men prodding the ground with bayonets and lifting the mines by hand.
41:16The German minefields at Alamein were five miles deep.
41:20To assault them, Montgomery had assembled a quarter of a million troops.
41:24British, Australians, New Zealanders, Indians, South Africans,
41:29Greeks, Poles, Czechs and Free French.
41:33Twice as many men as were required to attack the German minefields.
41:38Indians, South Africans, Greeks, Poles, Czechs and Free French.
41:44Twice as many men as Rommel had.
41:46Nothing was being left to chance.
41:49Oh, we were fully trained.
41:51We were really confident.
41:54Every single solitary man knew exactly what he had to do.
42:00Everything was in your favour.
42:02We had no fear as such.
42:05It's an old adage, you know, that it never happened to you personally, you think.
42:12October 23, 1942.
42:15In the darkening desert, 1,100 tanks and 1,000 guns moved into position.
42:21I was with my battalion laying mines in front of our own positions.
42:28And the Battle of Alamein started by seeing the whole horizon on fire.
42:49Yeah, well, a lot of people think that Alamein was a big barrage
42:54and everybody waiting behind, queuing up ready to go once the barrage finished.
42:59But it wasn't like that at all.
43:01There was some bloody fighting there, believe me.
43:04We moved off before the barrage.
43:07We were allowed a walking pace.
43:10That artillery fell in front of us.
43:17In the morning, we were disappointed to say the least
43:21when the tanks should have passed us.
43:24They hadn't arrived. Nobody had arrived.
43:31By the time the sappers got the mines up and there was a road made,
43:36the Germans realised the reason and they pinpointed their opening.
43:45It was all the uncertainty that the ground was going to erupt underneath you,
43:50that you forget about running through the minefield when a shell suddenly drops this side of you or that side of you.
43:54Our machine gun fire opens up our mortar fire.
43:57There were squeals, shouts.
43:59It was a battle of attrition.
44:02It was fought in a way, and rightly in a way,
44:06in which you had to continue the offensive
44:10until you had broken the enemy's power and resistance.
44:13And this does take time.
44:16If infantry gets on the objective, destroys the anti-tank gun,
44:19and the minefields are cleared,
44:21then the tank can come forward and exploit the situation.
44:24But until that happens, no success, no tanks.
44:28Montgomery lost 200 tanks in the first two days,
44:32as many as the Germans had started with.
44:35Rommel, now back in Africa, though clearly far from well,
44:38immediately counterattacked.
44:40Angry, his panzers had not done so
44:42when the British had been bogged down in the minefields.
44:45It was too late.
44:50Rommel was thrown back with losses he could not afford.
44:53Casualties were heavy on both sides.
45:06They really hung on, you see.
45:08It was really stubborn.
45:11When we finished, then we realised
45:14the casualties we'd left behind.
45:17You kept saying to yourself,
45:19it won't happen to me, he'll catch it, I won't.
45:22And all of a sudden it dawned on us,
45:24one day you won't always get away with it, lad.
45:34It was a killing match, as Monty had predicted.
45:38A messy, horrid killing match.
45:41A First World War battle fought with Second World War weapons.
45:52The battle of attrition was going Montgomery's way.
45:55The moment had come for him to let loose his armour.
46:12800 tanks, mostly Shermans,
46:15the latest and best tank from America,
46:18were thrown against the Germans and Italians.
46:21And Rommel had less than 100 tanks.
46:31Again the fighting was bitter.
46:34Rommel began to yield a little.
46:42For two days more, the battle raged.
46:45It was the biggest tank battle of the Desert War.
46:50Rommel was now down to only 35 tanks,
46:53compared with Montgomery's 600.
46:56Just when he was thinking of slipping away
46:59to hold a line 60 miles back,
47:02Hitler ordered his men to retreat.
47:06Just when he was thinking of slipping away
47:09to hold a line 60 miles back, Hitler ordered him to stay.
47:16It's a particularly nasty form of ending one's days
47:20if one is trapped in a tank
47:23and the tank brews up and is on fire.
47:26You will never lose the awfulness
47:29of screams of men trying to get out.
47:35The End
47:50The British armour was through,
47:53and by the afternoon of November 4,
47:56the 12th day of the battle, Rommel was in full retreat.
48:00Thousands of Italians were left behind.
48:03The Germans had pinched their transport.
48:06Rommel's deputy, Fontoma, was captured too.
48:15Alexander signalled Churchill to ring out the victory bells,
48:18which Winston did.
48:21The first time church bells had been rung in Britain
48:24since Dunkirk.
48:30Heavy rain fell on November 6th
48:33to impede both pursuit and pursuer.
48:36Montgomery's corps commanders were all for rushing ahead
48:39to trap Rommel before he could reorganise.
48:42Monty was not going to risk being trapped himself.
48:47Montgomery was very conscious
48:50that we had already been twice up and twice back,
48:53and he was determined not to be pushed back for a third time.
49:00The Desert Air Force thought to it
49:03that Rommel's retreat was not without incident.
49:09He had nowhere to run,
49:12and all he could do was run into the Seine.
49:15See, this is where the Desert Warfare was something on its own.
49:18You just sat out there, or you moved out there,
49:21and you were exposed to everything.
49:30Rommel's Return
49:40Past Mersa Matruh, past Sidi Barani,
49:43through Halfire Pass, Rommel was pushed back,
49:46turning to fight a little every day.
49:51On November 13th, to Churchill's great joy,
49:54Tobruk was retaken.
49:57A week later, it was Benghazi's turn to change hands
50:00for the fifth and positively final time.
50:11In mid-January 1943, Tripoli fell,
50:14the prize that had eluded O'Connor two years before.
50:19Last, the British people had something really to cheer about,
50:23and Churchill, the big victory he'd been hoping for
50:26before America would dominate the war.
50:32You have altered the fate of the war
50:35in the most remarkable way.
50:38I must tell you that your fame,
50:41the people,
50:44that your fame,
50:47the fame of the Desert Army,
50:50has spread throughout the world.
50:57Now, this is not the end.
51:00It is not even the beginning of the end.
51:04But it is perhaps the end of the beginning.
51:14THE END
51:44© BF-WATCH TV 2021
52:14© BF-WATCH TV 2021