Largest tank battle el alamein battle1/19/2024 The Highland Division, part of XXX Corps, occupied its position in the El Alamein Line on the evening of 22 October 1942, moving into prepared assembly areas. We can give them their answer at once: “It will swing our way” … All that is necessary is that each one of us, every Officer and man, should enter this battle with the determination to see it through – to fight and to kill – and finally, to win … and let no man surrender so long as he is unwounded and can fight’. The eyes of the whole world will be on us, watching anxiously which way the battle will swing. His message to the troops was clear: ‘The battle which is now about to begin will be one of the decisive battles of our history. General Montgomery was under no illusion as to the significance of the coming action. It was not ‘unfledged’ for long and would demonstrate the same qualities shown by their ill-fated comrades who had stoically opposed the rapid German advance in 1940. This new Highland Division, drawn from the same soil and bred on the same traditions, was unfledged a short time ago’. But that is an old, though glorious song. It suffered severely in France, fighting grimly to the death against terrific odds. One columnist wrote: ‘The old Highland Division, as we knew it at the beginning of the war, is now out of action. The Division included three Black Watch battalions. Montgomery’s forces comprised almost 200,000 men and included the 7th Black Watch, part of the reconstituted 51st Highland Division which had been forced to surrender to Rommel in June 1940. Its significance was stressed by Winston Churchill who said: ‘Before Alamein we never had a victory. Fought between Lieutenant-General Bernard Montgomery, recently appointed commander of the British Eighth Army, and Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, ‘The Desert Fox’, the second battle of El Alamein would be one of the decisive victories of the Second World War, reviving Allied morale and leading to the retreat of the Afrika Korps and German surrender in North Africa in May 1943. The Allied victory at El Alamein in October 1942 was the beginning of the end of the Western Desert campaign. The 7th Black Watch at El Alamein, 23-31 October 1942
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