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By Root 1098 0

—the sensitive, who suffer torment, and the unimaginative few who know no fear and go blithely on—is a fallacy. Everyone was as scared as the next man, for no imagination was needed to foresee the possibility of death or mutilation. It was just that some managed to conceal their fear better than others. Officers could not afford to show their feelings as openly as the men; they had more need to dissemble. In a big battle a subaltern had little or no influence over the fate of his platoon—it was the plaything of the gods. His role was essentially histrionic. He had to feign a casual and cheerful optimism to create an illusion of normality and make it seem as if there was nothing in the least strange about the outrageous things one was asked to do. Only in this way could he ease the tension, quell any panic and convince his men that everything would come out right in the end. Inwardly I marvelled that they did not take to their heels. They grumbled and looked apprehensive, but nothing more … [The NCOs were thinking,] ‘If an officer can do it, we damn well can.’ The men looked to the NCOs and said, ‘We’ll go wherever the bloody corporals go.’ Thus an army stands firm.”

On 23 October, Montgomery launched Operation Lightfoot, the opening phase of the twelve-day second Alamein battle, which began with a devastating bombardment. Vittorio Vallicella was chatting with some Germans, drinking captured tea, when British shells began to fall upon them. “I have seen many enemy barrages, but the intensity of this one is beyond our experience.” Men choking amid the acrid fumes of explosions watched tongues of flame leaping up across the desert. Vallicella took refuge in a dugout, seeking comfort in the companionship of others: “Together we feel less fear.” He described one scene hard to imagine in any army save that of Mussolini. Ordered by a lieutenant to load the dead onto a truck and drive them to a temporary cemetery beside a field hospital, he refused. The officer threatened him with a pistol. At that moment their colonel arrived, remonstrated fiercely with the lieutenant and snatched the weapon from his hand; the crestfallen officer collapsed into tears. Vallicella and his comrades took the bodies to a field hospital, where nurses helped with the grisly task of unloading. They told the soldiers that their main task for days past had been to lay the dead in mass graves; even the necessary bulldozers had to be borrowed from their German allies.

For almost a week, Axis forces beat back repeated British attacks. In London, Churchill fumed. Lt. Vincenzo Formica recorded a surge of exultation in his unit on 1 November: the Italians briefly supposed that the British had abandoned their efforts to break through. They were heartened by the news of heavy tank losses which panzers had imposed on Montgomery’s armoured units: “Officers and men, who had lived through the fighting and suffered for months amid the Egyptian desert through the hottest part of the year, saw that all their suffering and sacrifices were to be rewarded with the prize every warrior craves: Victory. We assumed we would be launching a counterattack. The word was ‘Christmas in Alessandria!’ ”

Within twenty-four hours, however, the picture changed dramatically. Montgomery afterwards claimed that Alamein was fought to his original plan. In truth, he was obliged to shift his focus of attack northwards, but the Eighth Army’s dominance of the battlefield was not in doubt. Attrition imposed intolerable losses on the Axis forces, whose fuel shortage had become acute. “All our illusions were shattered on the night of 2 November,” wrote Lieutenant Formica. They set off behind a tank column, only to discover that its leader was lost. At last their colonel appeared, and personally guided them to the Ariete Division’s concentration area. There “it became very plain to me that the whole military situation had changed—to our disadvantage. Long columns of vehicles from different units and even different formations were moving so chaotically as to make it obvious these were not organised