El Alamein

The very first "grown-up" book I read about World War II, back when I was 11 or 12 and obsessed with all things having to do with World War II, was a French "J'ai Lu" paperback called something like "The Battle of El Alamein," and somehow lost since then. I may have been attracted by the tank business: it was World War II's classic tank duel, that one between Britain's Montgomery and Germany's Rommel, the only field marshal--the only Nazi officer--I know of next to whom the word "honor" and "respect" can legitimately linger. Surely there may be a couple of others, but Rommel is the highest ranked. (Rommel was among the 1944 plotters against Hitler's life, and for that he was made to crack a cyanide pill under his teeth.)

El Alamein, a small town on the northern, Mediterranean coast of Egypt, not far from the Libyan border, is as historically insignificant today as it was then--except for that battle, and the graves it left behind. The battle literally turned the tide. Montgomery's tanks and nuttily fearless Australian contingents accomplished, in the desert sands of Egypt, what Adm. Chester Nimitz's carriers accomplished in the Battle of Midway in the Pacific four months earlier: they changed the momentum of World War II in favor of the Allies.

I'm no longer a World War II buff because I'm as far away from an any-kind-of-war-buff as one can be. But I still give history its due, especially, here, when the Middle East plays such a pivotal role.

Here's a brief history of the Battle of El Alamein.