Word: qattara
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Dates: during 1942-1942
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...mile line between the Mediterranean and the wild, serrated Qattara Depression, the Germans had a fixed and deeply fortified front. Before and between their positions they had planted many thousands of land mines, barely covered by the sand, in wait for British tanks, artillery, trucks and troops. On the Eighth Army's side of the line, between the Germans and Alexandria, the British also had permanent fortifications and mines. Patrols from each side constantly wormed into the mine fields, cautiously uncovered the buried boxes of T.N.T., neutralized them with a twist of a screw and threw them aside...
...Sturm, Schwung, Wucht." And so it looked this week. Rommel began his action with feints towards the north, then a jab at the southern front. With his entire Afrika Korps of four divisions-tank columns and light infantry-he swept along the edge of the Qattara Depression, struck at the British lines, penetrated some distance into British mine fields, swung toward the seacoast. This was Rommel's Sturm, Schwung, Wucht.* The operation was reminiscent of the wide sweep he had made around Bir Hachéim in May. But Alexander and Montgomery were ready for him. They had learned...
...Long Wait. For more than two months General Sir Harold Alexander's British had crouched along the 35-mile front stretching from the Qattara Depression to the sea. Daily they had made sorties and feints, lashing at Rommel's advance posts, scuttling back to their own lines to bind their wounds and bat the flies. The flies were the worst. They swarmed over the unburied dead. They swarmed over the living, drove soldiers close to madness, until morale ran out and men prayed only for some kind of action. Now they...
...British Commander in Chief of the Middle East, General Sir Claude John Eyre ("The Auk") Auchinleck. The Auk decided to plug Rommel at the neck of a funnel-the 35-mile gap between El Alamein on the coast and the northern tongue of the steep-sided, marsh-bedded Qattara Depression.* El Alamein is 70 miles from Alexandria...
...defense of Matrûh, the British drew up their line from that port south to the edge of the Qattara Depression-a great under-sea-level wallow bordered by steep limestone scarps and bedded with salt marshes. Even Rommel, they thought, would not try to outflank them by venturing into that...