Word: alamein
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1960-1969
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Like Gettysburg, El Alamein and other classic engagements, the Battle of Chicago seems destined to be endlessly refought. Unlike most textbook conflicts, however, no one can agree upon who won, let alone who the aggressors were or whether the battle need ever have occurred at all. When the President's commission on violence opened hearings in Washington last week, the nation's two top law officers, Attorney General Ramsey Clark and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, were firing from opposing sides...
Victoria Cross. The same eagerness crushed Indian mutineers at Lucknow in the Sepoy Rebellion in 1858. It scattered Nazi Germany's Afrika Korps in the Battle of El Alamein during World War II and earned the regiment the Victoria Cross, Britain's highest military honor, for service during the Korean War. On its last assignment, helping to quell last year's Aden rebellion, the regiment displayed its typical bravado, marching to the strains of bagpipe music into the middle of the Arab-terrorized Crater district under the colorful command of Captain Colin ("Mad Mitch") Mitchell...
...Thompson, Churchill removed the able but colorless General Claude Auchinleck as commander of the Eighth Army in North Africa and put the theatrical Monty in his place. Churchill's press officers set out to obliterate the fact that the Eighth Army had already won one battle at El Alamein and had the superiority to win others. Moreover, though Field Marshal Rommel was a sick and dispirited man commanding a weakened army, Churchill revived the myth of the invincible Desert Fox so that Monty would have to deal with a worthy foe. Even with the stage so cleverly set, Thompson...
Rivers of Blood. It is true that Monty's victory at El Alamein came at a time when the British desperately needed a conquering hero. The British propaganda mills unquesionably did work overtime to glorify Monty. It is equally true that he may have curried fame too eagerly. But it is a well-documented fact that Churchill had for months vainly implored Auchinleck again and again to attack Rommel. More importantly-and unforgivably-Thompson fails to emphasize that, ailing or not, Rommel did live up to his reputation by the brilliant way he feinted and eluded British attacks...
Though General Eisenhower himself complained that Monty was a prickly and secretive subordinate, and General Omar Bradley accused him of being too cautious, nobody can question that he won an overwhelming victory at El Alamein. And while the British had numerical superiority in men and tanks, it was no staged battle that was fought on the hot desert sands. It was a nightmarish engagement that was won eventually with British guts and skill. Even Rommel himself was appalled by the fierceness of the fighting. He wrote: "Rivers of blood were poured out over miserable strips of land which, in normal...