North Africa
In April 1941 the Division was dispatched to the Middle East first via Cyprus, Iraq, Syria, Egypt and then into Libya as part of XIII Corps in the British Eighth Army, which was one of the best-known formations in the Second World War.
In 1942, Rommel's Afrika Korps broke through the Allied defensive line at Gazala and the Eighth Army ordered them to abandon their positions.
Read more about this topic: 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division
Famous quotes containing the words north and/or africa:
“Biography is a very definite region bounded on the north by history, on the south by fiction, on the east by obituary, and on the west by tedium.”
—Philip Guedalla (1889–1944)
“Are you there, Africa with the bulging chest and oblong thigh? Sulking Africa, wrought of iron, in the fire, Africa of the millions of royal slaves, deported Africa, drifting continent, are you there? Slowly you vanish, you withdraw into the past, into the tales of castaways, colonial museums, the works of scholars.”
—Jean Genet (1910–1986)