Word: el
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Rommel Halts. Full-steaming into the funnel's neck, Rommel hesitated, then massed his forces and launched them at El Alamein. Thirteen of his Stukas, dive-bombing the British guns, were crumpled by fighters from South Africa, and the guns kept firing. Meanwhile, from the south a British light force sped around to harry Rommel's flank. After eleven successive days of relentless attack, Rommel's weary battalions had to withdraw to reform and prepare for a new attack...
...Germans and 40 cannon-some of the guns 25-pounders which the Germans had captured from them. Between the lines of counterattack, Rommel's five divisions of armor and infantry contracted into a solid, sinister oval, pointed at the British center. If that oval should crunch through, the El Alamein defense line that Auchinleck hoped to organize would be lost...
Egypt smiled because Rommel stopped, but the truth was that Egypt's plight was almost as desperate as when the German charged into the El Alamein funnel. He was still there, he was always dangerous, he was nearly intact. Moreover, he had a card up his sleeve, and it was sticking halfway out of his green gabardine cuff: parachute and glider troops concentrated in Crete, ready to help him by an assault from the rear...
...wide sweep around Bir Hachėim, to outflank the British line, but his intended surprise was detected, his columns were attacked by superior forces. At that point Rommel was worsted and he began to extemporize. While his engineers cut a gap in the heavily-mined Ain el-Gazala line, he distracted the British with various false movements, ringed his gap with protective artillery, then pushed his forces on through...
...next day Rommel began seeing to it that the remainder of the British Army was not allowed to rest and recoup by retiring. In a week he drove the British from Halfàya Pass, from Sidi Barrani, from Matrûh, from Fuka. Only at El Alamein, 70 short miles from Alexandria, were Rommel's men and tanks so exhausted that he had to pause to reform...