By Mursi Saad El-Din I have just come back from Marsa Matrouh, where I spent the most relaxing and enjoyable ten days in my life. I have to admit, shamefully, that, in spite of my advancing age, that was my first time in this jewel of the Egyptian north coast. For some reason this beautiful region has been, until recently, the black sheep of the tourist herd. Now, however, thanks to the foresight and indefatigable efforts of its Governor Brigadier Mohamed El-Shahhat, Marsa Matrouh is starting to take up a well- deserved place as the second bride of the Mediterranean, after Alexandria. I have to admit that whether in Egypt, Europe or the United States, I have never seen such a long stretch of beaches -- I couldn't count them but they are in the dozens or walked barefooted on such soft, white sands, or plunged on such azure blue and green waters. Now, at last Marsa Matrouh is included in the tourist map of Egypt, and is expecting 110 chartered planes this summer with over 35,000 European tourists. Well, this is just the beginning. But my visit to Marsa Matrouh brought back some memories far removed from tourism. It brought back the bitter-sweet recollections of the Second World War, and what came to be known as the war in the Western Desert, and more specifically, the battle of Alamein. The Second World War started in 1939, the year I gained my secondary school certificate and joined the English department of the Faculty of Arts, Fouad El-Awal (now Cairo) University. So I was witness to the Egyptian scene during the war. In 1945, after the end of the war in Europe and before its end in the far east, I went to London as secretary of the Egyptian Institute. So I had this unique opportunity of living the war in Egypt and celebrating victory in London. I must add that I, like many Egyptians at the time, was a supporter of the Allies cause for democracy against the Nazi dictatorship. I am not a historian and I cannot claim that I am writing history. I am simply writing down my memoirs about that decisive war in the Western Desert, about the state of affairs in Egypt during what came to be known as "the flap". In his book The Crucible of War, Barrie Pitt wrote, "The flat was triggered by the evacuation of the Royal Navy from Alexandria during the last days of June 1942. Rumours of the imminent arrival of the Afrika Korps (led by Rommel) created panic. In July 1942 the first battle of Alamein was fought and Rommel's advance threatened the whole of the delta and caused waves of panic." Alamein became the battleground for Rommel and Montgomery. It was a tug of war, exchanging hands between the two military generals. I remember seeing a film produced after the war called Hotel Sahara. It is a small hotel in Alamein owned by a French woman, played by Ivonne de Carlo. When the Germans advanced, she hung the photo of Hitler and when the British advanced she brought down the photo of the Nazi Fuherer and replaced it with Churchill's. After a series of failed British generals, Churchill appointed General Alexander as commander and Montgomery as field commander. In July 942 the first battle of Alamein was fought and Rommel began to advance towards Alexandria. Churchill sent a directive to the newly appointed commander which read, "Your prime main duty will be to take or destroy at the earliest opportunity the German-Italian Army Command by field Marshal Rommel together with all its supplies and establishments in Egypt and Libya." It was on 23 October 1942 that the second battle of Alamein commenced and Montgomery led the British forces to victory. In his book The Second World War, Churchill wrote, "The Battle of Alamein will even make a glorious page of British military annals. There is another reason why it will survive. It marked in fact the turning of 'the Hinge of Fate'. It may almost be said, 'Before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein we never had a defeat.'" But apart from the military battles, the Second World War had an important effect on Cairo. Freya Stark, in her book Dust in the Lion's Paw wrote, "Cairo was the centre of our world during the first three years of war, the stage on which all glances south of the Alps were focused. It had returned to the days of the Ptolemys when Egypt was the gate to Parthia and India and all the spice trade. You would hear every European language (except German) in the streets..."
