Description
After bitter debate, South Africa, a dominion of the British Empire at the time, declared war on Germany five days after the invasion of Poland in September 1939. Thrust by the British into the campaign against Erwin Rommel’s German Afrika Korps in North Africa, the South Africans fought a see-saw war of defeats followed by successes, culminating within the Battle of El Alamein, where South African soldiers made a significant contribution to halting the Desert Fox’s advance into Egypt. That is the tale of an army committed slightly reluctantly to a war it didn’t fully strengthen, sick-prepared for the battles it used to be tasked with fighting, and sent into action at the orders of its senior alliance partner. At its heart, then again, That is the tale of men at war.