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
First Battle of El Alamein with dug-outs and surrounded by minefields and barbed wire) the most developed being around the railway station at Alamein. Most of the "line" was open, empty desert. Lieutenant-General William Norrie (General officer commanding [GOC] XXX Corps) organised the position and started to construct three defended "boxes". The first and strongest, at El Alamein on the coast, had been partly wired and mined by 1st South African Division. The Bab el Qattara box—some from the coast and south-west of the Ruweisat Ridge—had been dug but had not been wired or mined, while at the Naq Abu Dweis box (on the edge