On this, the 75th anniversary of El Alamein, Derry historian Richard Doherty recalls how the Allied troops were led into battle by a man who was proud of his North-West heritage.
‘I’m a Derryman myself,’ commented the little general with the harsh, clipped voice. He didn’t sound like one to his listeners, most of whom were Derrymen. Some knew that the General’s family came from Moville and that his mother still lived there. A few knew that it had been some 300 years since his family had lived in the city. But it really didn’t matter. He was one of them and three months earlier had delivered a significant victory.
Lieutenant General Bernard Law Montgomery was addressing men of 9th (Londonderry) Heavy Anti-Aircraft Regiment, the ‘Derry Boys’, at Tripoli in Libya in February 1943. The victory had been Eighth Army’s defeat of the Italo-German Panzerarmee Afrika at El Alamein in November 1942.
The third and final battle of El Alamein began on Friday 23 October 1942. It opened with the largest artillery bombardment since the First World War, with over 800 guns firing on the German and Italian artillery positions. Such was the fury of the bombardment that it could be heard in Alexandria, some 60 miles away.
It shook the walls of the city’s Sacred Heart Convent and one of the Franciscan Missionary nuns there, Sister Mary Richard Coyle, from Rosemount, later recalled how the terrified sisters realised that they were listening to ‘the sound of history’.
The battle raged for two weeks before the Italo-German commander, Erwin Rommel, ordered his battered forces to retreat. By 23 January Allied forces had taken the city of Tripoli, capital of the Italian colony of Libya, with the first troops to enter the city being reconnaissance parties of 9th (Londonderry) Regiment. Although the 11th Hussars, the ‘Cherrypickers’, claim that distinction, they were greeted by Irish voices demanding to know what had kept them so long.
El Alamein was the beginning of the end for German and Italian fortunes in the war. Following on from the US Navy’s victory over the Japanese Navy at Midway in June, and coming before the defeat of Sixth German Army at Stalingrad in February 1943, as well as the turning of the Battle of the Atlantic in May 1943, it was one of the hinges on which swung the door of final Allied victory in the Second World War.
El Alamein 1942: Turning Point in the Desert tells the story of the three battles of El Alamein, setting them in the context of the Desert Campaign that began on 10 June 1940 and ended with the Axis surrender in Tunisia on 12 May 1943. The see-sawing struggle that saw the opposing sides advance and retreat between El Agheila on the Gulf of Sirte and El Alamein was often referred to as the ‘Benghazi Stakes’.
Perhaps the most famous of the generals in the desert was the German Erwin Rommel who arrived with his Deutsches Afrikakorps in early 1941 and later rose to command the Italo-German Panzerarmee Afrika as Germany’s youngest field marshal. On the British side a series of Irish generals held sway. Richard O’Connor gave Britain its first victory of the war with the destruction of Tenth Italian Army, and Alan Cunningham became the first commander of the famous Eighth Army.
Cunningham was relieved by his superior, General Sir Claude Auchinleck, in the course of the Operation CRUSADER battles that began in mid-November 1941 and the ‘Auk’, as the Fermanagh man was known, trounced Rommel, sending his then Panzergruppe Afrika into retreat. But Rommel was a risk taker extraordinaire and attacked Eighth Army in late-May 1942, forcing it back into Egypt as far as the El Alamein line.
Along that line, Auchinleck fought Rommel to a standstill from 1 July 1942 but Eighth Army had too few troops and tanks for a successful breakthrough and counter-attack. When Auchinleck and his gifted chief of staff, Cavan man Eric Dorman-Smith, were removed by Churchill in August, yet another Irishman, General Sir Harold Alexander, from Caledon, became the new commander in chief, succeeding Auchinleck, while Bernard Montgomery took command of Eighth Army.
Montgomery set out to prepare Eighth Army for the offensive that Churchill wanted but he and Alexander forced the premier to wait an extra month so that the army could be re-equipped, strengthened and better trained. In the meantime, Eighth Army fought and won the Second Battle of El Alamein when Rommel tried to break through at Alam el Halfa at the end of August.
By late October, everything was in place for the offensive, codenamed Operation LIGHTFOOT. Following strikes by RAF bombers, the guns of Eighth Army unleashed that frightening bombardment before the infantry attacked. It took two weeks of battle to overcome the Italian and German defenders who fought tenaciously throughout. A renewed attack, Operation SUPERCHARGE, finally broke the Axis resistance, although Eighth Amy suffered very heavy losses, and, on 4 November, the long retreat began.
* Richard Doherty's El Alamein: Turning Point in the Desert (2017) is out now from Pen & Sword Books
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