Desert Rats at War

London: Ian Allan Ltd, 1980. Presumed First Edition, First printing thus. Hardcover. Very good/Good. 345, [5] pages. Illustrations. Bibliography. Originally published as two volumes (Europe and North Africa), now in one volume. George Forty OBE (10 September 1927 - 19 May 2016) was a British Army officer who was chief of staff of the Royal Armoured Corps gunnery school and later director of the Tank Museum, and also author of many books on warfare. Forty published more than 70 books with a focus on armoured warfare and also on wartime in Dorset. From 1981 until his retirement in 1993 he served as the curator (director) of the Tank Museum. He modernized and greatly expanded it, becoming known as the "father of the Tank Museum". The 7th Armoured Division was an armoured division of the British Army that saw distinguished active service during World War II, where its exploits in the Western Desert Campaign gained it the Desert Rats nickname. After the Munich Agreement, the division was formed in Egypt during 1938 as the Mobile Division (Egypt) and its first divisional commander was the tank theorist Major-General Sir Percy Hobart. In February 1940, the name of the unit was changed to the 7th Armoured Division. The division fought in most major battles during the North African Campaign; later it would land and fight in the Italian Campaign during the early stages of the invasion of Italy before being withdrawn to the United Kingdom where it prepared to fight in North-west Europe. It began landing in Normandy during the afternoon of D-Day, 6 June 1944, and fought its way across Europe ending the war in Kiel and Hamburg, Germany. Although the division was disbanded during the 1950s, the history, name and the "Desert Rat" flash is carried on by the 7th Armoured Brigade.