Last Post for El Alamein veterans
Last Post for El Alamein veterans as they gather in the desert to mark 70 years since Second World War battle
Veterans of El Alamein, the Second World War battle that was a turning point for Britain and her allies, have gathered in the desert to mark its 70th anniversary.
https://teakdoor.com/images/imported/2012/10/2004.jpg Peter Watson visits graves of comrades who fell at the Battle of El Alamein Photo: WILL WINTERCROSS
By David Blair, El Alamein
5:19PM BST 20 Oct 2012
The man in Black Watch tartan, hunched by the burden of age, stood before a headstone bearing the crest of his old regiment and pushed a cross into soft desert sand.
Seventy years after the Battle of El Alamein lit up the horizon with the fury of 1,000 heavy guns, Peter Watson returned to Egypt's Western Desert on Saturday and paid silent tribute at the grave of a friend.
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Mr Watson in 1942
George Morrison, a fellow soldier in the Black Watch, was cut down by his side at the age of 22; today the inscription on the headstone reads: "Greater Love Hath no Man than this."
"Suddenly, he was dead," remembered Mr Watson, 92. "He was a great lad, a mate. It affects me now. It didn't affect me so much then. Then you just pressed on."
Pressing on meant taking part in one of the greatest clashes of arms in modern history. The offensive mounted by the British Eighth Army at El Alamein broke through the enemy's front-line, destroyed about a third of the fighting strength of Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps, saved the Middle East from enduring Nazi occupation and, perhaps most tellingly of all, restored Britain's belief in the possibility of final victory.
The run of British disasters, stretching from Dunkirk to Singapore, ended with the triumph in the desert. "Before Alamein, we survived," said Winston Churchill. "After Alamein, we conquered."
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The Last Post is played to mark the battles 70th anniversary (Will Wintercross)
More than 120,000 British soldiers fought in that mighty clash of arms, yet of that number, only Mr Watson joined yesterday's ceremony in El Alamein cemetery.
After that battle, America led every big Allied campaign of the Second World War. Rommel's defeat in the desert was the last time when the British army masterminded a military endeavour of historic proportions.
Twenty-four veterans from New Zealand had travelled 9,000 miles to mark the occasion, along with 21 Australians average age 92 and even two Germans who had served under Rommel.
Of the Britons who had led and secured an earth-shaking victory for the last time in their country's history, only Mr Watson was in attendance. He sat beneath a white marquee, a lone tartan-clad Briton among the khaki-wearing Commonwealth veterans.
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Mr Watson with Hans Richter, a German veteran (Will Wintercross)
If you must be the last man standing and, in the context of yesterday's ceremony, that is what Mr Watson was you might as well be dressed for the occasion. The former major duly wore a Black Watch kilt, made about a century ago for his father, who had served in the regiment during the First World War.
All around lay the white headstones of the fallen, who do not rest beneath the lawns and poppies of a European cemetery, but under the sand of North Africa. Capt Paul Collins RN, the British Defence Attache to Egypt, read out the poem to El Alamein, recounting with solemn wonder how "that crazy sea of sand" had "become a staid historic name" like "Troy or Agincourt".
In the heat of a Saharan autumn, with the graves sheltered by olive trees, the Last Post sounded and national wreaths were laid, including one commemorating the sacrifice of Axis forces.
There are, of course, many other surviving British veterans of El Alamein, some of whom will join a national service of remembrance in Westminster Abbey on Saturday.
More recent turmoil in Egypt helps explain the lack of British veterans at yesterday's service.
When the event was planned last year, Hosni Mubarak had just been swept away by revolution on the streets of Cairo. Andrew Murrison, the international security minister, who represented the Government at the ceremony, said that "based on a risk assessment", the Royal British Legion had advised veterans against making the journey to Egypt. "That's why there are relatively few British veterans here today," he added.
But Mr Watson had no doubts of the importance of his presence. "I'm principally here because there are not many of us left," he said. "I'm 92, so it's the last chance I'll have. I'm one of the strays left by history: to have actually been through the Second World War and life since then.
"Many people haven't got a clue what it was like. You feel that people should know and be aware."
Mr Watson volunteered straight after the outbreak of war and served with Royal Engineers in France, before being evacuated from Dunkirk in a destroyer. He won a commission in the Black Watch in 1941 and was Intelligence Officer for the 7th Battalion during El Alamein.
That placed him in one of the most exposed and dangerous positions of all in the vanguard of the attack, compass in hand, charged with ensuring that the British soldiers stuck to their agreed line of advance, thus avoiding their own artillery barrage.
"When it started at zero-hour, it was something like 600 guns firing and then we were off," he remembered. "We got through the German wire and then there were mines and the Germans were firing at us machine guns and all that."
On that first night, George Morrison was killed beside him. Hours later, Mr Watson was hit by shrapnel in the left hand. "At first, I didn't realise it," he said. "It's only immediately afterwards that you realise you've been hit." Did he carry on? "Oh yes," said Mr Watson. "It was only a flesh wound. You don't bugger off unless you've lost a leg or something."
With his hand bandaged, he continued navigating the battalion's attack until, the next day, he was wounded again. A piece of shrapnel tore through his nose, while other fragments perforated his buttocks.
After receiving some more bandages at the regimental aid post, Mr Watson wanted to return to his position, but his commanding officer ruled against the idea. "The CO came up to me and said 'Well Peter, you're no bloody good now' and sent me back."
Mr Watson was consigned to hospital in Jerusalem for six weeks of recovery, where the pain of separation from his friends vastly exceeded the discomfort of his wounds. "If you're away from your Battalion, you're away from your family," he said. "It's a terrible thing to be away from them.
Mr Watson was mentioned in dispatches for his service at El Alamein; later, having returned to his battalion, he won the Military Cross in Tunisia.
All his medals were on display when he mounted the altar and laid a wreath at the service, surrounded by the graves of 7,240 British and Commonwealth graves.
One veteran in attendance also displayed campaign medals, but they were black Maltese Crosses. Hans Werner Richter, 92, served with the Afrika Korps at El Alamein, deployed on the southern flank of the German defences near the Qattara Depression. Having taken part in the invasions of Holland, Greece and Crete, this was Mr Richter's first experience of defeat.
"I'm deeply impressed with the memory," he said. "I'm thinking of all my comrades. They had their lives taken even before their lives had really begun." Mr Richter was later decorated with the Iron Cross First Class the German equivalent of the Victoria Cross for his part in a parachute assault on a British fortress on a Greek island in 1943.
This was the only medal that Mr Richter was not wearing. "Because of the Nazi insignia, it's not allowed to wear it in public," he explained. "But I have it in my apartment."
Today, he feels nothing but friendship for British veterans. "I'm so proud to meet Allied veterans. It is important to meet as friends and to hope that all our dead comrades have not been forgotten," he said.
On the night before the service, Mr Richter had a strained but friendly encounter with Mr Watson. The German proffered his hand; the Briton accepted the gesture, but with visible reluctance.
For Mr Watson, any encounter with an old enemy remains slightly painful.
But his memory of the spirit that brought victory is undimmed. "I'll tell you what made the difference," he said. "Hot sweet tea, fags, a sense of humour and Winston Churchill. That's what won the war."
Last Post for El Alamein veterans as they gather in the desert to mark 70 years since Second World War battle - Telegraph