If there is any advantage to a state church, it is the religious
stagecraft it can produce for momentous occasions of state that
crave spiritual sanction. For all its faults, the Church of England
remains expert at such events. Its latest success was commemorating
at Westminster Abbey a couple weeks ago the 70th anniversary of the
decisive Battle of El Alamein.
The battle in Egypt’s western desert defeated German Field
Marshall Erwin Rommel, celebrated as the “Desert Fox,” after his
string of victories across North Africa. El Alamein was a tonic for
somber Britain, which had weathered three years of nearly
continuous defeat. Prime Minister Winston Churchill at the time
called it a “bright gleam that caught the helmets of the soldiers,
and warmed and cheered all our hearts.” He ordered Britain’s church
bells rung nationwide for the first time since World War II had
begun. “Before Alamein we never had a victory,” he later said.
“After Alamein we never had a defeat.” The battle’s hero was
General, later Field Marshall, Bernard Montgomery, who would remain
Britain’s most celebrated wartime commander. Clashing with American
generals like Dwight Eisenhower and George Patton, Montgomery
typically fairs poorly in American produced dramas, such as the
1971 academy award winning Patton with George C. Scott.
Indisputably eccentric, if maybe not always as preening and
insufferable as his American allies portrayed him, Montgomery was
still a suitable military hero for a Britain desperately in need of
one.
Montgomery’s 84-year-old son, the current Viscount of El
Alamein, wonderfully read from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans at
the commemorative service: “Let us then lay aside the works of
darkness and put on the armor of light.” Over 40 survivors of the
battle attended the evensong worship at Westminster Abbey. They
were a small remnant of the 200,000 British Commonwealth and other
Allied forces at the battle in 1942, about 4,000 of whom were
killed. At stake had been the Suez Canal, the oil of the Middle
East, and ultimately strategic access to the underbelly of the
Soviet Union, where most of the German army was then locked in
murderous struggle.
Germany throughout the war struggled for oil, and Rommel’s
Afrika Korps was itself nearly depleted at the time of El Alamein.
While the British Eighty Army was by then engorged with supplies,
especially tanks and planes from both Britain and the U.S., the
Germans were down to a few dozen tanks by the battle’s conclusion.
Rommel himself had in fact returned to the front only after the
battle had begun, having been recuperating from illness in Germany.
An initial order from Hitler forbade retreat, but withdrawal was
eventually countenanced by Berlin, and Rommel uncharacteristically
had to flee. Tens of thousands of Italian troops, not so
uncharacteristically, were left to surrender. Churchill famously
declared afterwards: “This is not the end. It is not even the
beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the
beginning.”
One British general who attended the Westminster service
commented: “In the Abbey I felt huge poignancy because you’re aware
when you lay the wreath on behalf of all those thousands of men who
died at Alamein and just around you are just a few who really knew
them and felt their pain, so I think I felt honoured and
privileged.”
Another British general was also quoted in the same news
release: “It’s almost embarrassing to meet them to the extent that
they are so humble and blasé about what we would have regarded as
life changing experiences had we been there in a tank, in an
armoured car, on the gun line, or as sappers clearing fields, all
of the things you read about when you study El Alamein were
described to me by those who actually did it. It’s a unique
experience.”
A 91-year-old battle veteran told the assembled worshippers that
his tank crew had traveled half way across North Africa, but all
but he were killed by the time they crossed the Seine River later
in France. The Dean of Westminster during the service somberly
pledged: “We shall remember those who died in the battle and those
who have died since, giving thanks for their courage and
determination, and as we celebrate the reconciliation of former
enemies we shall pray for lasting peace in the world.” Standing at
the Grave of the Unknown Warrior within the abbey, he commended all
who fell at El Alamein to the “unfailing love of our heavenly
Father.”
The music at Westminster Abbey, performed by the Band of the
Royal Artillery, included the Alamein March, the theme
from Out of Africa, Nimrod the Hunter, and a
Hymn to New England. The closing prayer, recalling
Christ’s victory over the grave, implored “eternal rest, we pray,
to those who died in the desert of North Africa,” whose “heroism”
might inspire “coming of thy kingdom where memories are healed, and
where grief gives way to joy.” The crowd of about 500 recited the
Apostles’ Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and sang “God Save the
Queen.”
Clerics processed in flowing, bright vestments, while elderly
veterans hobbled about clad in red uniforms festooned with medals.
The British Empire might be gone, but its ceremonies, and its great
Church, still live on, remembering supreme moments whose survivors
are now increasingly few.
