ABSTRACT
The triumphal march of the Eighth Army from El Alamein over 1,400 miles of desert to Tripoli, and thence to the mountains of Enfidaville, was a performance demanding management of a high order. The transport of more than 150,000 men with all their varied equipment, their armour, artillery, ammunition, fuel, workshops and services, their supplies from food to boots and socks, involving many hundreds of items, all necessities of life as well as of death, demands energies, imagination and forethought seldom forthcoming in times of peace. An army marches on its stomach. The ‘A & Q’ staffs of the new Middle East Command and of the Eighth Army had seen to it, magnificently, that the stomach was well filled.
