In 1849, the British explorer James Richardson wrote: ‘ … the best informed of the consuls in Tripoli say, “The future battles of Europe will be fought in North Africa.”’
This scrubby, sandy, blasted land is where the Eighth Army, the Desert Rats, turned the tables on the Axis in October, 1942. A little over thirty months later, the Italians and Germans would be defeated, Mussolini hanged from a meathook and Hitler's body incinerated in his chancellery garden.
El Alamein was largely fought by the British, Australians, New Zealanders and Indians. There were not many Canadians; those there were either a few army officers on secondment to the British Army to get battlefield experience or RCAF servicemen flying with the RAF's Desert Air Force.
It is difficult to get information on the Canadian soldiers, but research turned up the names of thirty-four Canadian airmen buried with 7,206 others at the El Alamein Commonwealth War Graves (CWG) cemetery. I was astounded that eight of the Canadians had had no family listed in their service records and decided to visit their graves. There would not be enough time for all thirty-four.
At the cemetery, a brief memorial service was held, and then, using the excellent CWG references - plot, row, number in row - I was able to locate the Canadian graves.
Who were these men? Why no family? Presumably, no one had ever come to visit. I touched their stones, thanked them, said they were not forgotten and left something from Canada.
As the huge British Empire cemeteries were laid out in France and Belgium following the Great War, the idea was to create some sense of a peaceful English garden. See my posting from May, 2008.
http://trainsandboatsandplanesandtheoddbus.blogspot.com/2008/05/somme-and-vimy.html
An English garden was clearly not possible following the desert battles of the Second War, but El Alamein cemetery is painstakingly tended and starkly beautiful.
The nearby German cemetery is in curious contrast. Unlike their low-key cemeteries on the Great War Western Front, this one, almost triumphal, evokes images of Teutonic fortresses.
Inside, 4,300 Germans lie in mass graves.
The horses below are taking a chance. In Egypt's Western Desert are thought to remain some 16 million pieces of unexploded shells and mines from World War II. Bedouin herders are still occasionally killed and injured.
Across North Africa, war's detritus is regularly found. This is an Italian tank that's been smartened up.
Sixty-seven years after the European battles of which Richardson so presciently wrote, tracks from armoured vehicles are still said to be visible in the desert.
