Doherty - El Alamein 1942: Turning Point in the Desert

El Alamein 1942

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Irish Generals: Irish Generals in the British Army in the Second World War (The Appletree Press, Belfast, 1993)

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Turning Point in the Desert

Richard Doherty

First published in Great Britain as The Sound of History:

El Alamein 1942 by Spellmount Ltd, Staplehurst.

This revised edition published by

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Copyright Richard Doherty 2017

ISBN 978 1 52670 079 7

eISBN: 978 1 52670 081 0

Mobi ISBN: 978 1 52670 080 3

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There are flowers now, they say, at Alamein;

Yes, flowers in the minefields now.

So those that come to view that vacant scene

Where death remains and agony has been

Will find the lilies grow

Flowers, and nothing that we know.

So they rang the bells for us and Alamein,

Bells which we could not hear:

And to those who heard the bells what could it mean,

That name of loss and pride, El Alamein?

Not the murk and harm of war,

But their hope, their own warm prayer.

It will become a staid historic name,

That crazy sea of sand!

Like Troy or Agincourt its single fame

Will be the garland for our brow, our claim,

On us a fleck of glory to the end:

And there our dead will keep their holy ground.

But this is not the place that we recall,

The crowded desert crossed with foaming tracks,

The one blotched building, lacking half a wall,

The grey-faced men, sand powdered over all;

The tanks, the guns, the trucks,

The black, dark-smoking wrecks.

So be it: none but us has known that land:

El Alamein will still be only ours

And those ten days of chaos in the sand.

Others will come who cannot understand,

Will halt beside the rusty minefield wires

And find there flowers.

John Jarmain

(Killed in action, Normandy, 1944)

Copyright in this poem expired in 2014. A donation in the name of John Jarmain has been made to the ABF, The Soldiers Charity.

With love to the memory of a dear aunt,

Sister Mary Richard Coyle OSF

Missionary Franciscan Sisters

19192000

We knew that we were listening to the sound of history.

and

with admiration and respect for

George France Morrison,

Lieutenant, 7th Battalion The Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment)

Killed in action at El Alamein, 23 October 1942

Aged 21 years.

This war is being fought to protect people like you from horrible things, and its only right that some should have the privilege yes, the privilege to give themselves for the cause of the good and the right.

and

in memory of

Peter Willett

Lieutenant, and Troop Leader, The Queens Bays (2nd Dragoons)

My troop was the leading troop of the leading squadron of the leading regiment of 1st Armoured Division.

MAP 1 THE WAR IN NORTH AFRICA, 1940-1942

MAP 2 ROMMELS ADVANCE HALTED BY AUCHINLECKS EIGHTH ARMY AT EL ALAMEIN