Original subtitles

(narrator) This land was made for war.

As glass resists the bite of vitriol,

so this hard and calcined earth rejects the battle's hot, corrosive impact.

Here is no nubile, girlish land,

no green and virginal countryside for war to violate.

This land is hard, inviolable.

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(narrator) Benito Mussolini

declares war on France and Britain.

Combattenti di terra, di mare, dell'aria.

(crowd cheering)

(narrator) Like some Roman consul,

Mussolini longed for an African empire.

Already he had massacred the Abyssinians and subjugated the Libyans.

Now he wanted more.

(man) We were certainly not ready to go to war in 1940.

lt was purely a political move from Mussolini

who felt that Hitler was winning too much too quickly

and that if he didn't make some sort of gesture, take some sort of initiative,

he would not be able to sit at the conference table.

(narrator) Mussolini's eyes were on Egypt -

the Egypt of the Nile and the Suez Canal.

ln autumn 1940, he poured 250,000 troops into Egypt's neighbour, Libya,

and another 300,000 into Ethiopia.

Facing them in Egypt were just 30,000 British soldiers

of the Western Desert Force.

September 13, 1940, when the battle for Britain was at its height,

Mussolini's men set out to conquer Egypt.

Completely outnumbered, the British troops simply fell back.

Affer four days, Mussolini's men were to reach Sidi Barrani,

60 miles inside Egypt.

There they would stop, still 300 miles short of Cairo.

(Colacicchl) Looking back, it seems extraordinary

how we moved into Egypt by sending out these enormous columns -

not very well protected because we didn't have many tanks.

And then each one of them settling down in a sort of fortified camp.

This helped, of course, General O'Connor, l think, a lot.

(narrator) O'Connor, the British commander,

had used the pause to plan a counterattack.

The ltalians had a series of these fortified perimeter camps,

and we decided that, as they were so far apart,

they would be unable to support each other,

and we moved our troops round to attack them from the rear,

the way that their rations would come.

(man) O'Connor undertook an operation which was due to last about four days,

which was the limit for the available tanks, which were nearly worn out,

and for our administration, in terms of supplying water and fuel and ammunition.

He achieved complete surprise,

got behind the ltalian positions at Sidi Barrani, and, in the morning,

the ltalian resistance collapsed.

(cheering)

(Belchem) O'Connor's great achievement was

that, by using captured vehicles and captured dumps of water and fuel,

he was able to maintain this four-day battle

into what became an offensive lasting over a period of weeks

and resulted in taking him as far as Benghazi

and indeed, beyond, to El Agheila.

(narrator) An area the size of England and France had been captured.

For the British, it was an unbelievable victory and marVellously opportune

for, back home, the Blitz was mounting in ferocity.

For Mussolini, a mere six months affer entering the war,

the defeat meant the pricking of his imperial pretensions.

(Colacicchl) Mussolini had said, "l want 1 ,000 ltalian dead

to be able to sit at the conference table."

And, of course, it cost many more than that.

(narrator) 200,000 ltalians were taken prisoner.

(man) They'd had enough.

ln many cases they were very, very happy to surrender.

To think that we were vastly outnumbered,

and to see one Tommy taking literally thousands back to the POW cage

was a great joy for us to see.

We used to call them "gentlemen". "There go the gentlemen."

(narrator) Tripoli, Libya's capital, was in O'Connor's grasp.

But Churchill withdrew the cream of O'Connor's forces

to meet the Nazi threat in Greece.

(G'Connor) We couldn't do Greece and Tripoli at the same time.

That was clear.

l say we could have done Tripoli immediately

and still leff the options open for Greece.

We lost an enormous opportunity

to finish up North Africa,

and it was a fatal error

to go to Greece.

lf we had advanced immediately, we could have pushed him out.

l entirely blame myself for not having done it.

l think it was quite inexcusable. l ought to have.

(narrator) February 12, 1941 . Hitler comes to Mussolini's rescue.

A small mobile force that had been hurriedly put together

set sail to Tripoli.

A force that was soon to be renowned as the Afrika Korps.

The task of the German Africa army was only

to tie down as many British troops as possible

and to cover the southern flank of Europe.

We had never the intention to conquer Egypt or to cross the Suez Canal.

(narrator) The man Hitler chose to save Mussolini from disaster

had made his name in France the summer before -

Erwin Rommel.

ln the port of Tripoli in February / March '41 ,

Rommel told my friend Lieutenant Hunt, an engineer:

"Hunt, here you can build me 150 tanks."

The man looked stupefied, and Rommel told him:

"Don't you have timber here in the harbour and canvas of sails

to make 150 covers for Volkswagen?"

"So you can give me 150 tanks."

And those tanks misled the British.

(narrator) Rommel knew nothing about desert warfare, but was bold and daring.

(man) Rommel was perhaps the ideal commander for this war theatre.

lt was very wide in area,

but very limited in numbers of soldiers,

and so he could apply practically naval tactics.

(Westphal) Towns and cities were very few

and, therefore, we had no difficulties with the Arabian population.

They didn't disturb us.

(narrator) The evening the Afrika Korps arrived, they were ordered to the front.

Rommel believed in attack, and quickly.

On the last day of March, when not all the troops promised had even landed,

he took on the British at El Agheila,

and in just 12 days pushed them back the 500 miles to Egypt.

(man) lt was as if the bogeyman was just round the corner.

lt was "Here comes Rommel,"

or "Rommel's coming down the desert fast. Get the hell out of it."

(narrator) Now it was the British turn to be taken prisoner in their thousands.

(man) Rommel told me to go ahead and we reached Derna,

picking up on our way English soldiers and generals who came in one by one.

Amongst them, the famous General O'Connor.

(G'Connor) lt was miles behind our own front.

We drove into the one bit of desert

in which the Germans had sent a reconnaissance group.

lt was a great shock, and l never thought it would happen to me.

Very conceited, perhaps.

(narrator) And so the Rommel legend took shape.

By mid-April, he had driven the British back where they had started.

But one pinprick remained - Tobruk.

100 miles behind the front, its Australian garrison held out,

denying Rommel a precious forward port for his supplies.

While Tobruk remained in British hands, it threatened Rommel's supply lines

and deterred him from advancing any further into Egypt.

Unable to take Tobruk by direct assault, Rommel prepared to besiege it.

The Luffwaffe, too, were called in.

Over 1 ,000 raids were mounted against Tobruk.

Under Rommel's nose,

the Royal Navy replaced their garrison with fresh troops -

Poles, South Africans, lndians, British.

(man) lt was bare rations in Tobruk.

Although one must thank the navy. They did a wonderful job.

(narrator) ln 1941 the Royal Navy ruled the Mediterranean.

They had done so since giving the powerful ltalian fleet

a bloody nose at Taranto the previous autumn.

And so British convoys made their way through the Mediterranean

relatively unmolested.

More importantly, operating from Malta,

the Royal Navy could harass Rommel's own convoys

passing from ltaly to Tripoli.

The British supplies got through, while Rommel's didn't.

Denied the petrol necessary for his panzers,

Rommel couldn't advance any further into Egypt that summer.

And, worse, no matter how hard he tried,

Rommel couldn't take Tobruk.

lt remained a thorn in his side, and became a symbol of British doggedness

every bit as much as Churchill's bulldog face.

(man) We were pestered with blaring loudspeakers on the perimeter.

We were called the self-imposed prisoners of Tobruk

and Rommel's propaganda machine bellowed at us to give up.

Well, we just took no notice. We said, "We'll stick it out."

We knew that they couldn't get in.

(man #2) There had been no light at the end of the tunnel at all

since the withdrawal from Dunkirk.

l think for political and, above all, for morale reasons -

the morale of the people of this country -

it was terribly important to show that we could hold the Germans.

(narrator) The Desert War was in stalemate,

a time for taking stock of tactics as well as supplies.

Rommel's tactics had more effect than those of the British,

especially in his use of tank.

(Beichein) We had been trained to fire on the move,

to execute the sort of cavalry charge on tracks,

and handle armour in that way.

The Germans had studied this problem much more than we between the wars

and also, of course, Rommel had experience from northern France

and so had many of his tank crews.

And they appreciated that the tank's best action against his enemy

is to wait for him to come on, sitting in a hull-hidden position.

lf they're caught in the open,

to decoy the enemy onto their own antitank gun lines.

(narrator) Rommel's main antitank weapon was the Krupp-made 88mm.

lt had decimated the French tanks in May 1940

and was doing the same now to the British tanks.

(man) lt was effective at 1 ,000 yards and over.

lt could pinpoint you, zero into you and it would brew a tank up easily.

(man #2) They could shoot at us before we were even within striking distance.

We couldn't hope to hit them with the two-pounders or the six-pounders.

(narrator) Rommel not only had the edge in tactics and equipment,

he also enjoyed the confidence of his political chief, Hitler.

Wavell, his opposite number,

was pressured by Churchill to provide a victory.

When he didn't, he was replaced by General Sir Claude Auchinleck.

"The Auk", in turn, appointed as his commander in the field

Lieutenant General Cunningham.

Cunningham had defeated the ltalians in East Africa

and put back Haile Selassie on the throne of Abyssinia.

But he was an infantryman and knew nothing about tanks.

The tank held the key to success in the desert,

but British tanks leff much to be desired.

(man) They were very poor, mechanically.

There were parts missing, parts not connected properly.

(narrator) Unlike the Germans, the British had few tank transporters,

so their tanks had to move long distances as well as fight

on their tracks.

(man) Every track is connected to the next track by a pin -

a lot of moving parts -

which, in the desert, was sometimes powdery but hard, gritty sand.

Well, water is a lubricant

and a tank track is best suited to muddy conditions.

(narrator) To Churchill, the Desert War had been too long in stalemate.

He needed victory,

especially affer the humiliating failures in Greece and Crete.

No sooner were Cunningham and Auchinleck appointed

then they, too, were pressured into an offensive.

The British now had more equipment, but their tactics hadn't changed.

Rommel might have been tempted to echo Wellington:

"They came on in the same old way and we stopped them in the same old way."

ln just five days that November,

Cunningham lost 300 tanks - two-thirds of his force -

many through mechanical failure.

(man) Say the track came off and jammed,

well, if you were in action,

you couldn't do anything about it but bail out.

And then you couldn't recover the tank.

At that time in the desert we had no means of recovery of tanks.

(man #2) You'd always leave the battleground.

Jerrys, they used to seem to stay there.

We might have had a successful day

but the Jerrys always seemed to deny us the battlefield.

(man) Their equipment had to come equally as far as ours,

but they seemed to value it more

and did every effort to recover their tanks as soon as it got dusk.

(narrator) By bluff and guile,

Rommel convinced Cunningham he had lost the battle,

but Auchinleck was determined to stay put.

He sacked Cunningham, who wanted to withdraw, and appointed Ritchie.

The gamble to stay and fight came off.

When defeat stared the British in the face,

the battle's balance swung dramatically their way,

as Rommel's panzers ran out of fuel.

Tobruk was relieved.

Rommel was forced to withdraw 500 miles back to his starting point,

and, on Christmas Eve 1941 , Benghazi changed hands for the third time.

But with Commonwealth forces again poised to push the Axis out of Africa,

they were again denuded of troops and equipment, this time for the Far East,

where Japan's entry into the war

threatened British bases in Burma and Malaya.

An opportunity of gaining something which was real and important

in the Middle Eastern theatre

was lost for the sake of something which was very doubtful

and unlikely to pay off in the Far East.

(narrator) Within a couple of weeks, Rommel counterattacked.

Against the weakened British forces, he recaptured Benghazi

and once more threatened Tobruk.

He was stopped at Gazala.

Once again, it was stalemate.

The peculiar conditions of the desert bred a comradeship that was unique.

To many, the Desert War was a private war,

the last to retain any pretence of chivalry.

(man) As soon as we stopped anywhere and there was a lull and a rest,

you'd clear off a patch of the desert and say:

"Right. Now we'll have a game of football."

(man #2) The sportsmanship showed in both sides.

Football games were not interrupted by artillery fire during certain periods.

(Beichein) The staple diet was biscuits and bully beef.

(man #3) We had bully beef fried, bully beef boiled,

bully beef with dog biscuits.

(man #4) Oh, and dog biscuits. Dogs would refuse to eat them.

(narrator) With food a problem and water scarce,

dysentery was a constant danger.

The Germans invented a water can which the envious English,

affer seeing theirs burst countless times on the bumpy desert surfaces,

copied and christened the "jerry can".

(man) We were rationed at one stage there on a cup of water a day

to bath and shave.

What offen happened was the sections collected their ration,

put it into a helmet and each would shave out of that.

(narrator) Above all, it was hot.

Very, very, very hot.

(man) lt was so hot you could fry an egg on the mudguard.

lt's literally true. You could break an egg on the outside.

lt was so hot it would sizzle.

(narrator) The fly was perhaps the desert soldier's greatest scourge -

not just as a nuisance but as a carrier of disease.

The flies were indifferent as to which side they plagued.

(man) There were competitions as to who killed the most flies.

The flies were that fattened with living on the dead

that any time you killed them,

the smell got into you and caused stomach upsets.

And we had orders from division headquarters

to cut out this business of killing the flies.

We just had to let them go.

(Westphal) l think one fly has, within one year, nine million children.

(narrator) There was, too, the occasional scorpion and viper.

And when the wind blew, the sand and dust got in everywhere.

(man) The fine dust used to clog up everything.

The jets would clog up in the carburettors.

Your watches would stop.

(man #2) We had great problems with our intestines that gave a form of diarrhoea

which was very severe because of the sand passing through.

(man #3) You had, for instance, to go from your quarters to the latrine,

and you had literally to do it with a march compass.

There are cases where soldiers did not return

when they had forgotten their march compass.

ln the sandstorm, of course, the fighting stopped,

which was enjoyed at the beginning.

Then affer three days you think:

"Better the sandstorm stops and the fighting starts again."

(narrator) Ritchie planned an offensive for May with Grant tanks from America.

But Rommel, as usual, got in first.

Ritchie had learnt little from previous mistakes.

Like the ltalians, he had set up

a series of fortified camps

and laid mines galore.

But as O'Connor had done

with the ltalians

Rommel simply went round the open flank.

(man) We were down south, just in front of Bir Hakeim

and, during the morning, we saw this dust going up from where Jerry was.

He was coming up through where the Seventh Armoured Div were.

And it was like a fox in a hen coop -

everybody dashing about all over the place.

(narrator) Ritchie's new tanks were proving a disappointment.

Once again, the British armour was out-manoeuvred.

The Battle of Gazala was Rommel's.

The way was open to the prize that had eluded Rommel the previous summer,

the prize that Churchill, for one, had determined ever to deny him - Tobruk.

Tobruk's fortifications had been neglected.

They were no longer as formidable as they had been the previous summer.

(newsreel) 27 Juni. Das Oberkommando der Wehrmacht gibt bekannt.

Berlin Radio broadcast news of Tobruk's surrender.

For Churchill it was a particularly dark moment.

For Rommel, the peak of his career,

and a grateful Führer made him field marshal.

The British now fell back into Egypt, further than ever before.

(De Guingand) l've never seen such chaos. You couldn't save the situation.

l've never seen a desert road crammed with every sort of vehicle,

every unit muddled up higgledy-piggledy.

No one knew what was going on and...

Luckily our air force was stronger than the enemy's,

otherwise l think we would have been routed.

(man) The state of despair had to be masked,

and it was masked in a typically British way - by nonchalance.

When Rommel was expected in Cairo that evening,

Lord Killearn, my ambassador,

instantly gave a dinner for 80 people at the Mohammed Ali Club

and said, "When he comes down, he'll know where to find us."

(narrator) Past Mersa Matruh, past Maaten Bagush, past Fuka, past Daba,

the British fell back, until, on June 30, 1942,

they reached a railway halt just 60 miges from Agexandria -

El Alamein.

lt was no chance choice of Auchinleck's

that the decisive battle for Egypt should be fought here at El Alamein.

This bit of desert was not like any other

over which the war had been fought.

As always, the sea was to the north,

but, here, just 40 miles inland, was another sea -

a sunken sea of quicksand and salt marsh,

impassable to tanks.

The Qattara Depression.

Until now the fluid strategy of desert warfare

had sprung from there being always an open flank.

But at Alamein, Rommel would have to think of something different.

Auchinleck prepared for the final battle for Egypt,

for, affer Tobruk, he had sacked Ritchie

and taken command of the Eighth Army himself.

But Churchill was already planning to sack him too.

Rommel didn't wait for Churchill's decision.

He threw his tired troops into a last, desperate attempt to take Egypt.

ln July, in perhaps the most decisive battle of the Desert War,

Auchinleck halted him.

(De Guingand) It was a frightfully important battle,

and it was touch and go that we might have lost our whole Middle East base.

(narrator) Churchill went to see for himself in August the troops' morale.

Tobruk's fall had exasperated him,

but he was heartened by the reception he got from the Eighth Army.

He'd already decided to appoint Alexander in place of Auchinleck.

The new Eighth Army commander was to be Montgomery,

although Montgomery had not set foot in the desert during the war.

(man) When Montgomery came we were a bit apprehensive about him

because we'd never seen this man who had white knees and what have you.

(Durrell) The presence of your PM suddenly was a very tonic thing.

He was wearing a siren suit, smoking an immense cigar,

but he had "WC" on his slippers -

he was wearing old-fashioned dancing pumps

that you used to wear with dinner jackets,

with W on one foot and C on the other.

And he gave us a very good pep talk.

(narrator) For Rommel, the laws of desert warfare

now began to work against him.

The further the advance, the longer the supply line.

(Westphal) l think we had crossed the Rubicon, like Caesar,

when we went to Egypt.

The eyes of Hitler were directed every day to the Russian front -

the deciding front -

and our role was not so important.

He was content if we had no difficulties,

but he was not able to guarantee

the supplies came to the North African force.

(narrator) Only one in four of Rommel's supply ships ever got through.

His solution - late in the day - crush Malta.

Göring's Luffwaffe believed it could annihilate the island single-handed.

(siren)

Stukas, Heinkels, Junkers, Dorniers, Messerschmitts

day in, day out, hundreds at a time, were ordered against the island.

Malta became the most bombed place on earth.

Malta held out.

Equally bad for Rommel,

the Desert Air Force could now operate from its home bases along the Nile,

just 100 miges behind the gine.

(man) ln the desert, fighting is characterised

by the opposition of tanks in large quantities,

of artillery, of air support.

Air support, for instance, didn't play a considerable role in Russia,

where troops had enough cover.

ln Africa, air superiority was all decisive.

(narrator) Montgomery had air superiority.

Desperately short of fuel, Rommel's convoys had to run the gauntlet,

the 1 ,400 miles from his main base at Tripoli,

whereas Montgomery was only 60 miles from his at Alexandria.

(Westphal) The distance from the ports -

Benghazi, Tripoli and, perhaps, Tobruk -

had become too big.

(man) During the jigsaws up and down the desert,

when we pushed Rommel back

we used to accuse him of putting oil in the wells,

which we thought was really a dirty trick.

Then when we came back down,

he would blame us for putting oil in the water.

And now it seems that, all the time, it was the oil wells below the ground

seeping through into the water well.

(narrator) ln September the Afrika Korps' morale was dealt a blow

when Rommel fell ill. Hitler ordered him home.

But his men were leff behind under the desert sun for a second year.

(man) When you are in the desert, you feel like a man on the moon would feel.

You are alone with the universe.

(narrator) For the men of the Afrika Korps, there was no question of leave,

only the certainty that, sooner or later, the British would attack them.

(man) The homesickness of the soldier

who would have preferred to be at home and not at war.

(woman) ♪ Vor der Kaserne Vor dem großen Tor

♪ Stand eine Laterne Und steht sie noch davor

(narrator) lt was no accident that the desert campaign

produced the most memorable song of the Second World War.

(woman sings "Lili Marlene" in German)

(man) Lili Marlene was a piece of our home.

(narrator) Lili Marlene was equally popular with the British.

(men sing "Lili Marlene" in English)

(man) We were always in touch with home.

We heard the news and, of course, we heard the opposition's news -

witness "Underneath the lamppost by the barrack gate".

♪ For you, Lili Marlene

♪ My own Lili Marlene

(narrator) For the British, home comforts were close at hand in Cairo,

just the pgace for a spot of geave with its bars, bazaars

and, um... other distractions.

(man) They used to take your money, yes.

(lively music)

l should say 75% of them

if they could find another woman, they'd have her.

(Durrell) lt really was weird

when you think of the whole of Europe blacked out and in darkness.

ln despair, you know?

ln Cairo, seething with light, you rang up people,

you went out to dinner, you had a hot bath and a whisky,

and on Monday you'd be back on the line.

(narrator) Montgomery saw his main task as raising the troops' morale.

He was the first commander to project himself like an American politician.

Press men and photographers kept at arm's length by Wavell and Auchinleck

now found themselves welcome.

(Beichein) He immediately went round all the formations of the Eighth Army,

gathering people round to talk to them.

He used also the press, the radio and gimmicks, such as his hats.

(man) They wanted something to be able to identify themselves with and look at,

something other than the strict uniform.

(De Guingand) lt was remarkable. ln days, there was a different atmosphere,

a feeling of confidence.

He told us that the bad old days were over

and he was now determined there was going to be success.

He said, "Now the only order

is everyone stays where they are, fights where they are and dies where they are."

(narrator) Montgomery saw to it his army had the latest weapons.

Pressed by Churchill to take the offensive,

"Monty", as he was soon known, was not going to be rushed.

He was determined, as he put it,

to have everyone tough and hard for the coming battle.

Because its first few hours were going to be dominated by the mine -

the Germans had laid over half a million of them -

the offensive had the codename Operation Lightfoot,

a sick joke if ever there was one.

A mine detector had been devised for use at Alamein,

but many were found to be faulty,

so most of the detecting had to be done in the old way -

by men prodding the ground with bayonets and liffing the mines by hand.

The German minefields at Alamein were five miles deep.

To assault them,

Montgomery had assembled a quarter of a million troops -

British, Australians, New Zealanders,

lndians, South Africans,

Greeks, Poles, Czechs and Free French.

Twice as many men as Rommel had.

Nothing was being leff to chance.

(man) We were fully trained. We were really confident.

(man #2) Every single solitary man knew exactly what he had to do.

(man) Everything was in your favour.

We had no fear as such.

lt's an old adage, you know,

that it'll never happen to you personally, you think.

(narrator) October 23, 1942.

ln the darkening desert, 1 ,100 tanks and 1 ,000 guns moved into position.

(man) l was with my battalion,

laying mines in front of our own positions,

and the Battle of Alamein started

by seeing the whole horizon on fire.

(man #2) A lot of people think that Alamein was a big barrage

and everybody waiting behind,

queuing up ready to go once the barrage finished.

But it wasn't like that. There was some bloody fighting there, believe me.

(man #3) We moved off before the barrage

and we were allowed a walking pace -

that was so the artillery fell in front of us.

(man #4) ln the morning we were disappointed, to say the least.

When the tanks should've passed us, they hadn't arrived. Nobody had arrived.

By the time the sappers got the mines up and there was a road made,

the Germans realised the reason, and they pinpointed that opening.

(man #3) There was uncertainty that the ground would erupt underneath you,

but you forget about running through a minefield when a shell suddenly drops

and machine-gun fire opens up and mortar fire.

There were squeals, shouts.

(Harding) lt was a battle of attrition.

lt was fought in a way, and rightly in a way,

in which you had to continue the offensive

until you had broken the enemy's power of resistance.

And this does take time.

(man #3) lf infantry destroys the antitank gun

and the minefields are clear,

then the tank can come forward and exploit the situation.

But until that happens, no success, no tanks.

(narrator) Montgomery lost 200 tanks in the first two days,

as many as the Germans had started with.

Rommel, now back in Africa, though clearly far from well,

immediately counterattacked, angry his panzers had not done so

when the British had been bogged down in the minefields.

lt was too late.

Rommel was thrown back, with losses he could ill afford.

Casualties were heavy on both sides.

(man) They really hung on, see. lt was really stubborn.

When we'd finished, then we realised the casualties we'd leff behind.

You kept saying to yourself, "lt won't happen to me. He'll catch it, l won't."

All of a sudden it dawns on you,

"One day you won't always get away with it, lad."

(narrator) lt was a killing match, as Monty had predicted.

A messy, horrid killing match.

A First World War battle fought with Second World War weapons.

The battle of attrition was going Montgomery's way.

The moment had come for him to let loose his armour.

800 tanks, mostly Shermans, the latest and best tank from America,

were thrown against the Germans and ltalians.

And Rommel had less than 100 tanks.

Again, the fighting was bitter.

Rommel began to yield a little.

For two days more the battle raged.

lt was the biggest tank battle of the Desert War.

Rommel was now down to only 35 tanks, compared with Montgomery's 600.

Just when he was thinking of slipping away to hold a line 60 miles back,

Hitler ordered him to stay.

(man) lt's a particularly nasty form of ending one's days

if one is trapped in a tank

and the tank brews up and is on fire.

You will never lose the awfulness

of screams of men trying to get out.

(narrator) The British armour was through

and by the affernoon of November 4, the 12th day of the battle,

Rommel was in full retreat.

Thousands of ltalians were leff behind. The Germans had pinched their transport.

Rommel's deputy, Von Thoma, was captured too.

Alexander signalled Churchill to ring out the victory bell,

which Winston did -

the first time church bells had been rung in Britain since Dunkirk.

(thunder)

Heavy rain fell on November 6 to impede both pursued and pursuer.

Montgomery's corps commanders were all for rushing ahead

to trap Rommel before he could reorganise.

Monty was not going to risk being trapped himself.

(Harding) Montgomery was very conscious

that we had already been twice up and twice back,

and he was determined not to push back for a third time.

(narrator) The air force saw to it

that Rommel's retreat was not without incident.

(man) He had nowhere to run. All he could was run into the sand.

(man #2) This is where desert warfare was something on its own.

You just sat out there or moved out there

and you were exposed to everything.

(gunfire)

(narrator) Past Mersa Matruh, Sidi Barrani, through Halfaya Pass,

Rommel was pushed back, turning to fight a little every day.

On November 13, to Churchill's great joy,

Tobruk was retaken.

A week later it was Benghazi's turn to change hands

for the fiffh and positively final time.

ln mid-January 1943, Tripoli fell -

the prize that had eluded O'Connor two years before.

At last the British people had something really to cheer about.

And Churchill? The big victory he had been hoping for

before America would dominate the war.

(Churchill) You have altered the face of the war in the most remarkable way.

l must tell you that your fame,

the fame of the Desert Army, has spread throughout the world.

(bagpipes playing)

Now, this is not the end.

lt is not even the beginning of the end.

But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

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