British Army during the Second World War the command of Lieutenant-General Sir Alan Cunningham. Over time the Eighth Army would be commanded by Neil Ritchie, Claude Auchinleck, Bernard Montgomery, Oliver Leese and Richard McCreery. In the early years of the war Eighth Army suffered from poor leadership and repeated reversals of fortune until the Second Battle of El Alamein when it advanced across Libya into Tunisia and joined the First Army in the 18th Army Group. The Eighth Army, under 15th Army Group command, later took part in the Allied invasion of Sicily, the Allied invasion of Italy and the Italian Campaign, where progress was slow and
Second Battle of El Alamein the DAF to be cautious, reduce the number of offensive sorties on 5 November and protect the Eighth Army. The Axis made a fighting withdrawal to El Agheila but Rommel's troops found themselves exhausted and with few replacements, while Montgomery had planned to transport material over great distances, to provide the Eighth Army with of supplies per day. Huge quantities of engineer stores had been collected to repair transport infrastructure and the railway line from El Alamein to Fort Capuzzo, despite having been blown up in over 200 places, was quickly repaired. In the month after Eighth Army reached Capuzzo,