By Alec Hogg
Anniversaries provide an opportunity for reflection, without which life becomes a senseless blur of activity. So we shouldn’t allow the 75th milestone of El Alamein, South Africa’s finest military victory, to pass unnoticed. Especially as it was the first nail hammered into the coffin of what until that point appeared to be an impregnable dictatorship.
In November 1942, the 1st South African Division fought alongside comrades from the UK, India, Australia and New Zealand in winning the decisive African campaign of World War Two. After 12 bloody days of action against Rommel’s Afrika Korps, the Allies triumphed in what hindsight showed was the watershed in a war they had been losing.
Britain’s legendary wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill described the battle as the “turning of the hinge of fate.” In volume eight of Churchill’s epic work on the Second World War, he wrote: “Before Alamein, we never had a victory. After Alamein we never had a defeat.”
As another dictatorship hits the wall in SA’s northern neighbour, it’s apt for democrats to commemorate the battle which sparked the beginning of Adolf Hitler’s end. An irony sure to be lost on another national leader who favoured a toothbrush moustache.
From Biznews community member Chris Willis
Hi Alec – thanks for remembering El Alamein today. You left one country out in your note unfortunately. My Dad and 3 of his brothers fought that battle – for what is now a mythical place called Rhodesia. It saddens me that England doesn’t even acknowledge Rhodesia’s contribution, even under the name Zimbabwe. One brother was killed and my Dad and another brother wounded. Another taken POW – all for England.
