Sixty years ago this evening, the massive artillery bombardment that heralded the battle of El Alamein began. There's a good account by Richard Holmes at BBCi.

El Alamein was the culmination of two years of desperate and not very successful fighting, when Britain and the Commonwealth, alone in Europe, and for a time alone in the World, with sheer bloody-minded obstinacy stood against the evil of fascism. I'm proud of our record in the early years of World War 2, even though I wasn't born at the time. And I'm proud too that Britain is standing alongside America in the current crisis, when again there is an evil death-cult, armed and determined to snuff out our civilization, to resist.