El Alamein

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El Alamein (or Al Alamayn) (Arabic: العلمين) is a town in northern Egypt on the Mediterranean Sea coast. It is located 106 km (66 miles) west of Alexandria and 240 km (150 miles) northwest of Cairo.

Today it is mainly a port facility for shipping oil.

[edit] History

El Alamein played a major role in the outcome of World War II. Two extended battles were fought in that area:

At the First Battle of El Alamein (July 1 – July 27 1942) the advance of Axis troops on Alexandria was blunted by the Allies.

At the Second Battle of El Alamein (October 23 – November 4, 1942) Allied forces broke the Axis line and forced them in a retreat that pushed them all the way back to Tunisia. Winston Churchill referred to this as "not the beginning of the end, but, perhaps, the end of the beginning".

[edit] Tourism

There is a local war museum with collectibles from The Battle of El Alamein and other North African battles. Visitors can also go to the Italian and German Military Cemetery on Tel el-Eisa Hill just outside the town. The German cemetery is actually an ossuary containing the remains of 4200 German soldiers which is built in the style of a medieval fortress. The Italian cemetery is a mausoleum containing many galleries of tombs. Wherever possible, each tomb bears the soldier's name, but many are simply marked "IGNOTO" – "Unknown". There is also a Commonwealth war cemetery with graves of soldiers from various countries who fought on the British side. This has monuments commemorating Greek, Australian and South African forces. The Commonwealth cemetery, as is common at many such cemeteries in the world, consists of parallel rows of gravestones, each one bearing an engraving of the deceased soldier's unit emblem, his name and an epitaph from his family.