Following his acclaimed history of the Battle of Britain, Bungay
now turns his attention to the other great British triumph of the
Second World War - El Alamein. In the North African desert in
autumn 1942, the British Eighth Army under General Montgomery
defeated Rommel's Afrika Korps in an epic battle. For anyone who
has any military experience or memories of the Second World War
this is an unputdownable account. Indeed, it should be required
reading for everyone, especially for the fourth chapter, entitled
'The Soldiers' War', which provides a graphic and realistic account
of the conditions experienced by front-line troops. This book is
not just an account of a battle, but provides a broad sweep of the
events which led up to it, and a less sweeping account of its
aftermath. It also puts the whole desert war in perspective in
relation to the war as a whole. Bungay shows how compared with the
Wehrmacht the British (and Commonwealth) armies were ill-prepared
and undertrained. Montgomery was a prickly egotist, and few will
disagree with Bungay's critical summation, but none who encountered
him will ever forget his dynamic and inspiring leadership. His
ruthless weeding out of the incompetent went far below senior
commanders and transformed the Eighth Army. While Rommel was expert
at exploiting opportunity, Montgomery's genius lay not only in his
preparation for battle, but in sticking to his intentions. Of
course, and quite rightly, much is made here of supplies and air
superiority, but in the end battles are won by the bloody clash of
infantry. If there is a criticism to be made of this gripping
analysis, it is in a neglect of those whose bayonets and raw
courage actually did the job. The British soldier, at the worst of
times, never lost confidence in his own ability, only in those who
led him. Montgomery restored his belief. This is a brilliant
account of Alamein and all the issues surrounding it - political,
military and technological. Highly recommended. (Kirkus UK)
El Alamein was the World War II land battle Britain had to win. By
the summer of 1942 Rommel's German forces were threatening to sweep
through the Western Desert and drive on to the Suez Canal, and
Britain was in urgent need of military victory. Then, in October,
after 12 days of attritional tank battle and artillery bombardment,
Montgomery's Eighth Army, with Australians and New Zealanders
playing crucial roles in a genuinely international Allied fighting
force, broke through the German and Italian lines at El Alamein. It
was a turning-point in the war after which, in Churchill's words,
"we never had a defeat". Stephen Bungay's book is as much at home
analysing the crucial logistics of keeping desert armies supplied
with petrol and tank parts as it is reappraising the combat
strategies of Montgomery and Rommel, and ranges widely from the
domestic political pressures on Churchill to the aerial siege of
Malta, key to the control of the Mediterranean. And in a chapter on
"The Soldier's War", Bungay graphically evokes the phantasmagoric
blur of thunderous cannonade and tormenting heat that was the lot
of the individual men who actually fought and died in the desert.
General
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