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At dawn on October the 30th, 1942, the battle began that changed the course of the Second
World War. The BBC's Godfrey Talbot was there; Godfrey "The air story is again of fire and
destruction Talbot: among axis transport fleeing west
and against axis positions. Heavy and medium bombers attacked the withdrawing enemy forces
and the high explosives dropped, included some of our very large bombs."
Allied planes were destroying one of Germany's finest armies. Below, near El Alamein, in
the North African Desert, General Montgomery's army of British, Australian, New Zealand and
Indian troops faced Field Marshal Rommel's Afrika Corps, who'd swept across Libya in
a three hundred mile drive to try to reach Egypt. For months, the British Eighth Army
had taken a hammering. Now all that was to change in a set piece battle that became a
text book classic, not least because the British had bided their time until they had superiority
in every kind of weapon. Another weapon that Rommel had to contend
with was the high morale of the British troops, due mainly to the leadership qualities of
the charismatic Bernard Montgomery. His army trusted him and that, in no small measure,
was how victory was achieved. Back in London, the news of the El Alamein
triumph was a welcome relief after the reverses of Dunkirk, the U-boats, and the Blitz. Prime
Minister Winston Churchill, drove home the point;
Winston "Rommel's army has been defeated, it has been
Churchill routed, it has been very largely destroyed as a
fighting force. Now, this not the end, it is not even the beginning of the end, but
it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."