21st July 1945, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill addressed the7th Armoured Division: Dear Desert Rats! May your glory never fade! May your laurels never fade! May the memory of this glorious pilgrimage of war which you have made from Alamein, via the Baltic, to Berlin never die! It is a march unsurpassed in the history of war. The legend of the Desert Rats began with the destruction of the Italian 10th Army in 1940. When Nazi General Erwin Rommel arrived in Libya with his Afrika Korps, the ebb and flow of desert warfare pitted the two great forces against each other. As part of the 8th Army under General Bernard Montgomery, the Desert Rats played a key role in the crucial battle at El Alamein which forced the Afrika Korps into retreat. On the 11th May 1943, the Axis forces in North Africa finally surrendered, and the desert war was over. After four years of fighting the veterans were still not finished. They fought their way across Europe from D-Day to the surrender of Berlin, with the spirit and determination that made them some of the most famous Gladiators in the British army.
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