The Eighth Army attacked at El Alamein on October 23, 1942. A huge artillery barrage opened at night, and the infantry went forward behind it into the minefields and the wire. The battle that followed decided the war in North Africa.
Montgomery had prepared for months. He took command in August and refused to fight until he had overwhelming strength in men, tanks, and guns, and he waited while Rommel's supplies ran thin. The delay frustrated Churchill, and it worked.
The fighting was grinding. The Axis line, deep with mines and defended by experienced troops, had to be broken yard by yard, and the battle ran for twelve days. The breakthrough came slowly, but it came, and Rommel's army began a retreat it would never reverse.
The cost was heavy on both sides. The Eighth Army lost thousands of men and many tanks, and the Axis losses, made worse by a shortage of fuel, were worse still. Rommel wanted to withdraw sooner and was overruled, and the delay cost him the army.
Alamein was the turn. From that point the Axis forces were pushed back through Libya and out of Africa, and the road to the invasion of Italy was opened. Churchill's verdict was stark: it was the first great British victory of the war.