The Eighth Army advance reaches Agheila

In North Africa the British Eighth Army continued its pursuit of Rommel’s army westwards. Whilst the resistance in Tunisia had stiffened, in Libya Rommel was falling back in as orderly fashion as possible, putting up brief rear guard actions that killed a few men on both sides and attracted little notice. Now they reached Agheila where Rommel had established his defensive line in late 1941 and from where he had launched his surprise assault in early 1942. After a year of fighting the two armies were back roughly where they had started from.

Keith Douglas was leading his squadron of tanks in the long advance, and saw intermittent action. He was still recording the strange twists of fate that befell men in war:

We fought an action, mainly against Italian gunners, before Agheila.

They fought very bravely, and the crew of one gun allowed Tom’s tank to get within fifty yards of them before firing. Unfortunately for them, they missed him, only carrying away the ration boxes on one side of the tank, and he overran the gun, actually crushing one of the crew under the tank.

In this action, the M.O. was badly wounded, and for a long time was in danger of losing an arm and a leg. But later we heard that he had managed to keep both, although they would never be 100 per cent useful again. His driver was killed outright.

That evening, going into leaguer after dark, Raoul who had just completed his first real day in action since reioining us (he had had little to do on the reconnaissance) had his elbow smashed by a stray shell and was taken away, back to Alexandria, out of the war, having been in action only three days and wounded twice.

See Keith Douglas: Alamein to Zem Zem