TOMORROW two Army squadrons will parade through Swindon.

They will honour what one of Britain’s greatest soldiers, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, called a debt paid in heroism and blood.

A (Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry) Squadron The Royal Yeomanry and B (Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry) Squadron The Royal Wessex Yeomanry are Territorial Army units specialising in reconnaissance. A Squadron is based in Swindon and B Squadron in Old Sarum.

The liberation of Iraq from the murderous dictatorship of Saddam Hussein in 2003 was the highest profile recent battle honour in a history dating back to 1794, but tomorrow the soldiers march to honour comrades who fought 70 years ago in a key battle of World War Two.

The Second Battle of El Alamein, spanning 13 days in October and November of 1942, saw the Allies under Montgomery begin driving the Axis forces under Rommel from Egypt.

The stakes were high: whoever controlled Egypt controlled the Suez Canal; whoever controlled the canal had access to Middle Eastern oilfields, and the Nazi war machine needed those oilfields to survive.

At the end of the battle, Churchill famously said in a speech at The Lord Mayor's Luncheon in the Mansion House: “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

During the battle the Yeomanry was part of the Ninth Armoured Brigade, providing tank support for infantry. It had a hand in smashing through the Axis defences, but only by facing a wall of guns and suffering great losses.

Earlier in the North African campaign, the infantry had often paved the way for tank crews, but now it was the other way around.

Many years later Montgomery wrote that if British armour owed any debt to the infantry, that debt had been paid “...in heroism and blood” .

The Adver covered the battle from beginning to end, but like all newspapers it did so through the filter of wartime censorship.

There was certainly no mention of individual units, but readers would have known only too well where their loved ones were fighting.

On Saturday, October 24, as Allied aircraft moved in to soften Rommel’s forces, we wrote: “Britain’s vast new desert army is looking on at an unforgettable sight.

“Beneath a bright Moon and across the path of the Sun it is seeing score after score of British and American aircraft of the great air striking force fly over the short 70 mile gap separating the Nile Valley and the El Alamein front and hearing them pound and strafe the enemy near and far.”

Headlines on ensuing days charted the progress of the battle. “Eighth Army Hold Desert Gains,” we wrote on Monday, October 26, and on the Tuesday: “Gap In Rommel’s Defences Widened”.

By the Friday it was “Our Desert Gains Extended,” and on the Saturday: “Axis Counter Attack Repulsed”.

By the following Wednesday Rommel was retreating, and we quoted a journalist from an independent French agency: “The most vital tank battle of the African War opened yesterday on a featureless stretch of the Western Desert, when British armoured forces thundered through the gap torn in Rommel’s lines by our infantry and fanned out in the early light.

“Fighting raged furiously until darkness fell.”

Tomorrow’s parade, which also marks the signing of an Armed Forces Community Covenant, will start at 12.35pm at Church Place and pass through the town centre.