THE MEMOIRS OF
FIELD-MARSHAL EARL ALEXANDER OF TUNIS,
1940-1945
Field-Marshal Earl Alexander
VG/VG. Cassell & Company Ltd, London, 1962. First Edition. Clean dust jacket in mylar protector. Jacket price-clipped. Upper corners of jacket spine chipped. On the front flyleaf is the inscription:
"To my dear Friend Eddie with best wishes. Alex. April 25th 1963." On the title page is his signature again:
"Alexander of Tunis, F.M."
Laid in is a Western Union telegram, folded into quarters. It is addressed to Mr
Edwin J Mejia of San Francisco and is dated June 16, 1969, and reads: "DEEPLY REGRET INFORM
YOU OUR COLLEAGUE LORD ALEXANDER DIED EARLY THIS MORNING."
Many maps & photographs, index,
210 pages.
" 'By repute he was Winston Churchill's fire brigade chief par excellence: the man who was always despatched to retrieve the most desperate situations.' Lieutenant-General
Sir Brian Horrocks wrote these words in his description of his first meeting in the desert with General Alexander, Commander-in-Chief Middle East, and afterwards Deputy Commander-in-Chief
of the Eighteenth and Fifteenth Army Groups, Commander-in-Chief Allied Armies in Italy, and last, Supreme Allied Commander, Mediterranean. And at that time, August 1942, a fire brigade chief par
excellence was desperately needed in North Africa. The Allied forces, though clinging resolutely to the outposts of Alamein, had been flung back across the desert by Rommel, who expected to sweep
onwards to the Nile Delta, the Suez Canal, and Complete Axis domination of the Mediterranean. Alex brought a new hope to
the Desert Rats. He instilled them with his own confidence, thought of victory where others had made plans against defeat, until under his brilliant command, Montgomery was ready to fight and win the battle of Alamein. But even as his generals drove the enemy from North
Africa, Alexander was planning far ahead ~ for Sicily and the first major seaborne invasion by either side during the war, the assault on Italy and the problems of campaigning there, over a seemingly unending succession of mountain ranges,
ravines and rivers, where places called Salerno, Anzio and Cassino were to become part of
history. It was said that before Alamein the Allies never knew victory, and after Alamein never knew defeat. Much of the credit for this belongs to Alexander. The generals who fought under him have written of the war as they saw it. Now, at last, the master-planner of their victories has written his own very personal and candid account of those victorious years and those same generals.
His judgements on such men as Montgomery, Horrocks, Patton, Mark Clark, Eisenhower,
Alanbrooke and Churchill himself, are memorable, made by a man who above all was a brilliant judge of men.
Illustrated by photographs from Alexander's own albums, with maps which provice a graphic commentary to his narrative, here are the long-waited memoirs of the greatest British fighting soldier of them all."
$200.00
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