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Briggs’ 1st and Major-General Alec Gatehouse’s 10th Armoured Divisions of X Corps would flood. Montgomery’s Schwerpunkt was going to be not on the coastal road to the north nor down by the Qattara Depression in the south – as it had been in almost all previous engagements over the past two years – but instead in the centre of the battlefield. In this, as with his insistence on a decisive battle and his return to attritional warfare, Montgomery was to prove both original and far-sighted. As Michael Carver, who served under him in the Western Desert, would later write: ‘It may have been expensive and unromantic, but it made certain of victory, and the certainty of victory at that time was all-important. Eighth Army had the resources to stand such a battle, while the Panzerarmee had not, and Montgomery had the determination, will-power and ruthlessness to see such a battle through.’28

Nor can one belittle Montgomery’s success at Alamein by pointing out his two-to-one superiority over Rommel in terms of artillery and men, and four-to-one superiority in effective tanks. The established view in military thinking was still – as it had been since Napoleon’s day – that the attacker needed a three-to-one preponderance to be sure of victory. Moreover, as one of his officers, the military historian Peter Young, has pointed out: ‘If, for once, a British general managed to get his army across the start line with a numerical superiority over the enemy, this should be a matter for praise rather than complaint!’29

Montgomery, while learning the lessons of the Second World War on which he had been at the receiving end at Dunkirk, had also not forgotten those of the Great War. With what he called ‘100% binge’, Montgomery believed that a huge initial barrage and the attack of Leese’s corps could begin a process of what he called ‘crumbling’, whereby the Axis forces – particularly the Italian infantry – would be demoralized and collapse, especially once Lumsden’s tanks attacked them from the flanks and rear. British anti-tank guns and tanks pouring through the bridgehead would, he hoped, hold off the Panzers’ inevitable counter-attack wherever the breakthroughs occurred.30 (In writing military history – indeed history in general – it is impermissible to use the word ‘inevitable’, except when describing the Germans’ swift and aggressive counter-attacking of Allied successes.) Panzers on the move would prove a far easier target both for the DAF and for the British tanks and anti-tank gunners. Unlike earlier desert commanders, Montgomery was positively looking forward to the Axis response, or claimed to be, for morale’s sake. ‘Having thus beaten the guts out of the enemy,’ Montgomery told his divisional commanders, ‘the eventual fate of the Panzerarmee is certain. It will not be able to avoid destruction.’ Envisaging ‘a dogfight lasting about twelve days’, Montgomery predicted a crushing victory.31

The Eighth Army’s massive artillery bombardment opened up at 21.40 hours on Friday, 23 October 1942, accompanied by aerial attacks from Wellington and Halifax bombers. In all, some 882 guns, manned by around 6,000 artillerymen, took part, with the field guns averaging 102 rounds per gun per day. An estimated 1 million shells were fired by the Allies during the battle.32 In Cairo, Alexander cabled ‘Zip’ to a relieved and initially delighted Prime Minister in London. After twenty minutes of firing against Axis artillery, at 22.00 the target became the Axis front line, to soften it up for the infantry assault under a full moon. ‘The peaceful stars were shaken in their heavens when nearly a thousand guns flashed and roared simultaneously against us that night,’ recalled Second Lieutenant Heinz Werner Schmidt, who was serving in a reserve anti-tank battery. ‘The earth from the Qattara Depression to the Mediterranean quaked. Far back from the front line, men were jarred to their teeth.’33 The barrage could be heard in Alexandria, some 60 miles away. It continued for five hours, and then broke off at 03.00, only to be resumed at 07.00. Meanwhile sappers