Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research 99/397

Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research 99 (2021), 194-212

THE BATTLE OF EL ALAMEIN, 1942 MINEFIELDS AND GAP CLEARANCE – THE SAPPER ELEMENT

J OHN C. C ARBIS

‘… Rivers of blood were poured out over miserable strips of land which, in normal times, not even the poorest Arab would have bothered his head about ...’ . 1 General Feldmarshall Rommel on El Alamein Introduction The general situation of the war in the summer of 1942 is best summed up in the words of Field Marshal Lord Alexander in his dispatch on the subsequent period in Africa: … The Japanese were hammering at the eastern gates of India, the German armies in Russia were lapping round the northern bulwarks of the Caucasus, and a tired and battered British Army turned at bay among the sand hills of El Alamein, only sixty miles from Alexandria… There it stood and, on that critical day of 2nd July, having defeated the enemy’s most desperate efforts to break through. By this stand the survivors of the old Desert Army gained the vital time necessary for the arrival of the fresh Divisions and improved tanks, which were to turn the scale of battle. 2 Spasmodic efforts had been made to develop a defensive position about El Alamein on which 8th Army stood. So much attention has been given in historical records of the war to the final offensive battle, that little account has been taken of the firm base that checked Rommel’s victorious advance and enabled General Montgomery to organise and launch his successful counter-offensive . 3 With the advance of the Axis forces to the Egyptian frontier in April 1941 it was decided that a defensive position should be constructed in this favourable area. The details of the position, were laid out by the Commander and Staff of 50th Division in consultation with Chief Engineer (CE) Brigadier G. Streeten, British Troops Egypt (BTE), with Lieutenant-Colonel C. Topham appointed special Commander Royal Engineers (CRE) to take charge of the Engineer works. 4 The Battlefield and Sappers In August 1941 after an initial plan had been modified, work started on three defended localities or ‘Boxes’ extending across the belt of good-going (firm 1 B.H. Liddell Hart (ed.), The Rommel Papers (New York: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1953), p. 306, herein after cited as Hart. 2 Maj-Gen R.P. Pakenham-Walsh, History of the Corps of Royal Engineers, Volume VIII, p. 372, hereafter cited as Pakenham-Walsh.

3 Ibid., p. 373. 4 Ibid., p. 375.

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