Start Digging, You Bastards!

Australian and New Zealand forces' desperate battle with Rommel and the Axis at El Alamein

By: Tom Gilling

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Paperback | 1 October 2025

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The gripping story of Australians' and New Zealanders' key role defeating the Axis in North Africa - a true turning point of World War II

'We were to go through and take on targets of opportunity, to shoot up anything we could. Never at any stage can I remember any plan of us coming back, none of that was ever talked about ... We felt it was a suicide mission.'

July 1942: the North African campaign rages and the Allies have been forced to retreat from Gazala, chased through the sandy wastes by Field Marshal Rommel, 'the Desert Fox', and his Panzerarmee. The Axis target is Cairo-if they take it, they will control the Suez Canal and be within striking distance of the oil fields of the Middle East, tipping the balance of the war firmly in Hitler's favour.

In their way is the Eighth Army, spearheaded by the battle-hardened troops of the 9th Australian Division and the 2nd New Zealand Division. General Montgomery's stand will turn the tide of the war but he depends on the tenacity of these soldiers to break the resistance of the formidable Afrika Korps.

Bestselling author Tom Gilling recounts in vivid detail the brutal hand-to-hand fighting, deadly artillery barrages and momentous tank battles that characterised the desert war, culminating in two immense clashes involving hundreds of thousands of troops around an isolated Egyptian railway halt at El Alamein. Rich in historical insight and heart-pounding action, Start Digging, You Bastards! brings to life the fateful conflict in the Egyptian desert, evoking the desperate, dust-choked struggle through the eyes of the troops, whose courage and endurance were tested to the very limit.

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