Plain Talk

By Mursi Saad El-Din

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A few weeks ago, ambassadors of both the Allies and the Axis (the two warring sides in World War II), met in Alamein. It was not to celebrate victory or bemoan defeat, but to remember the soldiers who fell on both sides.

When I read about the occasion I was reminded of Wilfred Owen's poem Strange Meeting about the meeting of two dead soldiers: one German and one English. It describes the agony and the waste of life:

"Strange friend" I said "there is no cause to mourn"
"None", said the other, "save the undone years,
The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,
was my life also, I went hunting wild
After the wildest beauty in the world,
Which lies not calm in the eyes, or braided hair,
But mocks the steady running of the hour."
Then the poet goes on to say
And of my weeping something had been left,
Which must die now. I mean the truth untold,
The pity of war, the pity war distilled.
And finally
"I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
I know you in the dark; for so you frowned
Yesterday through me as you jabbed and killed.
I parried; but my hands were loath and cold.
Let us sleep now".

I always refer to this poem when there is talk of war. Owen wrote the poem during World War I, but it can apply to any other war. In the WWI the poetry was written by well-known poets who were called or volunteered to join the forces. During WWII the poetry was written by active soldiers in the middle of the fight. And for some reason the major part if not all of the poetry came from soldiers in the Western Desert. The poems were about action in the field, the tug of war that was going on between the British forces on one side and the Italian- German armies on the other. It was a game of advance and retreat.

But it was in the battle of Alamein that the main fight was fought, between the Africa Korps, led by Rommel, and the British forces under the command of Montgomery. It was a tug of war, exchanging hands between the two military generals. After a series of failed British generals, Churchill, who was Prime Minister at the time, appointed General Alexander as commander and Montgomery as field commander.

In July 1942 the first battle of Alamein was fought and Rommel began to advance towards Alexandria. Churchill sent a directive to the newly appointed commander which read, "Your prime main duty will be to take or destroy at the earliest opportunity the German-Italian Army Command by Field Marshal Rommel together with all its supplies and establishment in Egypt and Libya."

It was on 23 October 1942 that the second battle of Alamein commenced and Montgomery led the forces to victory. In his book The Second World War Churchill wrote, "The battle of Alamein will even make a glorious page of British military annals. There is another reason why it will survive. It marked, in fact, the turning of 'the Hinge of Fate'. It may almost be said, 'Before Alamein we never had a victory.' After Alamein we never had a defeat."

The battle of Alamein was remembered in different ways. I remember seeing a film produced after the war called Hotel Sahara. It is a small hotel in Alamein owned by a French woman, played by Yvonne de Carlo. When the Germans advanced, she hung the photo of Hitler and when the British advanced she brought down the photo of the Nazi Fuherer and replaced it with Churchill's.

Among the hundreds of poems written by WWII soldiers, one called El Alamein, drew my attention. It was by John Jarman.

There are flowers now, they say, at Alamein
Yes, flowers in the minefields now.
So those that come to view the vacant scene,
Where death remains and agony has been
Will find the lilies growing.
Flowers, and nothing that we know
The final sextet goes as
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.