Indian Army during World War II Cunningham. Over time, the Eighth Army would be commanded by Generals Neil Ritchie, Claude Auchinleck and Bernard Montgomery. In the early years of the war, the 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. The Ninth Army was formed on 1 November 1941 with the re designation of the Headquarters of the British Troops in Mandate Palestine and Transjordan. It controlled British and Commonwealth land forces stationed in the eastern Mediterranean. Its commanders were General Sir Henry Maitland Wilson and Lieutenant-General Sir William
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,