Master of the dark arts

The Second Battle of El Alamein began on the full-moon night of 23 October 1942 with a thousand-gun barrage, firing more than half a million shells before dawn. For nearly two months, since the Axis failure to break through at the Battle of Alam el Halfa, the two sides had faced each other across a 40-mile front, from the Mediterranean south to the treacherous low-lying area, notorious for its quicksand, known as the Qattara Depression. Above: An Eighth Army Tommy advances to take the surrender of a German tank crew during the Second Battle of Alamein, October-November 1942. Lieutenant-Colonel Dudley Clarke (below) was the charismatic figure behind the elaborate deception operations that