Half a Century Later, 2nd Battle of El-Alamein Offers World a Lesson

Duncan McIntyre, 19, led the Highlanders’ charge, his bagpipes skirling “The Road to the Isles.”

Thus began the second battle of El-Alamein on Oct. 23, 1942, beneath a brilliant moon.

At 9:40 p.m., soldiers from Britain and the Commonwealth loosed the fury of 1,000 guns on German and Italian opponents in the sands of Egypt’s western desert. The earth trembled. Tanks rumbled forward.

McIntyre was wounded twice, but kept playing. A third wound killed him.

Joe Leveson of Middlesex was here that night, riding a tank of the 4th Armored Brigade.

“You can’t imagine the sound,” he said half a century later. “That’s why so many of us today are hard of hearing.”

In 10 days of battle, 13,500 Commonwealth soldiers and 59,000 Axis troops were killed, wounded or captured. When the fighting ended, in rain and mud, the tide of World War II had turned.

Today, veterans, widows and diplomats are honoring Alamein’s fighters in a 50th anniversary commemoration. Prime Minister John Major of Britain is to attend the service outside the fortress-like German memorial.

“Alamein is a lesson for the world: Know the sacrifices of war, realize the cost,” said Arthur Howe of Lyme, Conn., who was a major in the American Field Service ambulance corps, attached to the Commonwealth forces.

“It’s an unbelievable cost, hopes and aspirations buried in cemeteries stretching continuously across the desert,” he said.

Howe was among about 60 Americans at El-Alamein, either with the American Field Service or flying with the Royal Air Force. At least 10 were killed.

How important was the battle?

“Before Alamein, we hadn’t won a victory. After Alamein, we never lost,” said George Worthington of Cheshire, England, who fought with the 50th Infantry.

Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of the Desert Storm coalition against Iraq, considers Alamein one of three pivotal battles of World War II, along with Guadalcanal in the Pacific and Stalingrad in Russia.

He did not restudy Alamein before Desert Storm, another great tank battle, “but I remembered its lessons,” Schwarzkopf said.

Alamein made legends of two armies and their leaders.

The British 8th Army were “the Desert Rats” and Lt. Gen. Bernard Law Montgomery became “Monty,” the “soldiers’ general.”

On the other side, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, “The Desert Fox,” led the fearsome panzers of the Afrika Korps.

In Montgomery’s headquarters hung a quotation from Shakespeare’s Henry V: “Oh, God of Battles! Steel my soldiers’ hearts!” On another wall was a photograph of Rommel.

The Alamein battlefield was 40 miles of featureless desert, bounded on the north by the Mediterranean Sea and on the south by the quicksands of the Qattara Depression.

At stake was the German dream of conquering the Suez Canal and the rich Arabian oil fields at the end of their victorious sweep across 1,500-miles of North Africa.

British and Commonwealth soldiers had been dug in at Alamein since July. Five million German mines, “the Devil’s Garden,” protected Rommel’s forces against infiltration.

Montgomery arrived Aug. 13 and told his men: “If Alamein is lost, Egypt is lost. If we cannot stay at Alamein alive, we will stay there dead.”

Howe, the American, said Montgomery was “mesmerizing,” and “always told the men they must forge ahead, but if they don’t make it, the ones behind will.”

Sometimes, the general would pass in his tank and throw cartons of cigarettes to the soldiers, Howe said. Montgomery neither drank nor smoked.

It was a hard time for the men. “The flies were terrible, the heat was awful,” Howe said. “There were always skirmishes, somebody always dying.”

“Well, you get used to anything, I guess,” said Leveson, the British tank crewman. “We poured tea for each other.”

They lived on crackers and canned beef, fried eggs on their tanks, swatted flies and killed scorpions, sometimes snakes.

The first battle of Alamein was an Axis attack Aug. 30 at Alam El-Halfa. Rommel withdrew four days later.

Worthington, the former British foot soldier, said it was common knowledge among the troops that Winston Churchill, the British prime minister, became impatient after that. “He wanted to go on in, but Montgomery wanted everything in place,” Worthington said.

Equipment moved toward the front, dummy tanks were brought in and leaves were canceled. U.S.-made Grant and Sherman tanks crunched through the desert.

“I don’t know what we’d have done without those American tanks,” Worthington said.

Rommel went to Austria late in September to recuperate from an illness. He returned Oct. 25.

Commonwealth forces had 530 flyable aircraft, the Axis 340. They had 939 tanks in the forward area to Rommel’s 548. His included Italian machines known as “self-propelled coffins.”

The count of fighting men was 210,000, well-supplied with ammunition and fuel, against 180,000 Germans and Italians with artillery, but little gasoline for their tanks.

Fighting was fierce the first two days. The New Zealand Division, 9th Australian Division and Britain’s 1st Armored Division and the Rifle Brigade bore the brunt.

Both sides suffered heavy casualties around Kidney Ridge, a key position.

Although Montgomery lost 200 tanks, he launched “Operation Supercharge” on Nov. 1. By the next day, Rommel had only 30 tanks left.

On Nov. 4, Rommel disregarded Hitler’s orders and began a masterful retreat across North Africa. Four days later, American troops of Operation Torch, under Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, landed in northwestern Africa, increasing the pressure on Rommel.

Tobruk fell on Nov. 13, Benghazi on Nov. 20. On Jan. 23, 1943, Commonwealth troops captured Tripoli, completing their own 1,500-mile victory march.

Alamein has become known as a gentlemen’s battleground, perhaps history’s last. Rommel called his writings about the North Africa campaign “War Without Hate.”

Karl Zimmermann was 22 when he served with the Afrika Korps at El-Alamein. He was seriously wounded three weeks later.

“Two were dead; I lost my left eye,” he said at his home in Mannheim, Germany. “The English came out of their tank, bandaged us and gave us cigarettes, chocolates and water.

“That’s something about the English I will never forget. I say thanks. If it had been Russians, we would have been given a final shot.”

In a view from the other side, Howe said: “It was a rule of thumb you wanted to be captured by a German,” not an Italian, because “you knew he’d treat you well.”