Alamein Cemetery & War Memorial

Two important World War II battles were fought in the area. At the First Battle of Al Alamein (July 1, – July 27, 1942) the advance of Axis troops on Alexandria was blunted by the Allies, when the German Panzers tried to outflank the allied position. At the Second Battle of El Alamein (October 23 – November 4, 1942) Allied forces broke the Axis line and forced them all the way back to Tunisia. Winston Churchill said of this victory: “Now this is not the end, nor is it even the beginning of the end, but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.” He also wrote “Before Alamein, we had no victory and after it we had no defeats”.

Al Alamein visitors can visit the Italian and German Military Cemetery on Tel el-Eisa Hill just outside the town. The German cemetery is an ossuary with the remains of 4,200 German soldiers, built in the style of a medieval fortress. The Italian cemetery is a mausoleum containing many galleries of tombs. Many tombs bear the soldier’s name; 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, New Zealand, Australia, South African and Indian 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.

The Alamein Memorial is a Commonwealth War Graves Commission war memorial in the El Alamein War Cemetery, El Alamein, Egypt. The memorial commemorates 11,866 Commonwealth forces members who died during World War II. The memorial was designed by Hubert Worthington and unveiled by Viscount Montgomery of Alamein on 24 October 1954.

The memorial commemorates a collection of different areas of service and geography. For land forces the memorial largely commemorates those who died during the Western Desert campaign as well as in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Iran and have no known grave. For airmen the memorial commemorates those that died in Egypt, Libya, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Greece, Crete and the Aegean, Ethiopia, Eritrea, the Somalilands, the Sudan, East Africa, Aden and Madagascar and in service of the Rhodesian and South African Air Training Scheme and have no known grave.[1] The memorial is collocated with El Alamein War Cemetery, which largely contains the graves of men who died at all stages of the Western Desert Campaign.

When designing the memorial, Worthington followed similar principles to First World War memorials but made modifications on account of the climate and environment in Africa. This included building tall walls to keep out drifting sand, providing shelters from the sun, and planting succulents, including cacti in place of plants more common in Europe.