Start Digging, You Bastards!
The Turning Point of the Second World War
by Tom Gilling
Published by Allen & Unwin
RRP $34.99 in paperback | ISBN 9781761471766
‘… the more I think back, the more I realise that winning was only made possible by the bravery of the 9th Australian Division’. – Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery
July 1942: the North African campaign rages and the Allies have been forced to retreat from Gazala, chased through the sandy wastes by Field Marshal Rommel, ‘the Desert Fox’, and his Panzerarmee.
The Axis target is Cairo – if they take it, they will control the Suez Canal and be within striking distance of the oil fields of the Middle East, tipping the balance of the war firmly in Hitler’s favour. In their way is the Eighth Army, spearheaded by the battle-hardened troops of the 9th Australian Division and the 2nd New Zealand Division.
Two decades after the end of the war, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, while visiting the Alamein war cemetery to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the battle, commented that ‘the more I think back, the more I realise that winning was only made possible by the bravery of the 9th Australian Division’.
The cemetery contains the graves of 1234 Australians among its 7000 graves. Overall 5500 Australians were killed, wounded, captured or reported missing of a starting strength of 16,000. This was the price Australians, among others, paid for their key role in defeating the formidable Afrika Korps led by the legendary Field Marshal Rommel.
It came to be seen as a true turning point of World War II. This was a period of desperate struggle for supremacy in the Egyptian desert.
In emerging triumphant, the Allies thwarted Hitler’s plan for control of North Africa and the oil fields.
But it was not until almost a year later, in May 1943, that Italian General Giovanni Messe, in charge of the combined and renamed Italo-German Panzer Army would surrender to the Allies marking the end of the desert war.
Author Tom Gilling recounts the terrible conflict in vivid detail and with an immediacy that brings the story, in all its brutal detail, to life.
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militarybooksaustralia.com 