The First Battle of El Alamein (1–27 July 1942) was a battle of the Western Desert Campaign of the Second World War, fought on the northern coast of Egypt between Axis forces (Germany and Italy) of the Panzer Army Africa (Panzerarmee Afrika) commanded by Field Marshal (Generalfeldmarschall) Erwin Rommel, and Allied (specifically, British Imperial) forces (Britain, British India, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand) of the British Eighth Army commanded by General Claude Auchinleck. The battle, although a stalemate, halted a second advance by the Axis forces into Egypt. However, an Axis presence near El Alamein only 66 mi (106 km) from Alexandria, was too dangerously close to major population centres and the Suez Canal for the Allied forces to allow the status quo to remain; a Second Battle of El Alamein would be required to drive the Axis armies out of Egypt for good.
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“... the big courageous acts of life are those one never hears of and only suspects from having been through like experience. It takes real courage to do battle in the unspectacular task. We always listen for the applause of our co-workers. He is courageous who plods on, unlettered and unknown.... In the last analysis it is this courage, developing between man and his limitations, that brings success.”
—Alice Foote MacDougall (1867–1945)
“This sort of thing may be tolerated by the French—but we are British, thank God.”
—Bernard Law, 1st Viscount Montgomery Of Alamein Montgomery (1887–1976)