Clash of Warriors

For weeks after the D-Day Iandings, AIlied troops were pinned down in the dense Normandy 'bocage', the small fields, narrow lanes, and high hedgerows where German anti-tank ambushes and snipers inflicted mounting casualties. Their resistance would only be broken by a spectacular breakout action, and this vital task was entrusted to the flamboyant, hard-driving George Patton. Once his armoured units had been unleashed on the Allied right wing, and were swinging round behind the German defences there was little that Guenther Hans von Kluge's battle-weary troops could do to hold the line.

The 1944 Battle of the Bulge, which pitted U.S. Gen. Omar Bradley against German Field Marshall Walter Model, is recalled.

When the Allies captured the airfield at Myitkyina in May 1944 it brought together two determined and ruthless commanders, General Joseph Vinegar Joe Stilwell and Lt. General Masaki Honda, in an uncompromising face off.

Erwin Rommel made his name as one of the outstanding commanders of World War 2 Ieading the German Afrika Korps in a series of sweeping victories which took his forces almost to the banks of the Suez Canal. But at an obscure railway halt in the desert, he came up against his nemesis. Cautious and methodical, Bernard Montgomery was a very different sort of leader, but one ideally suited to the costly and desperate slogging match that was needed to penetrate the formidable Axis defence lines and begin the Iong advance across North Africa.

Following the Allies success at El Alamein, the war in the desert became the retreat of the Afrika Korps and Italian forces and also the first joint Anglo-American land operation of the war. In April 1943, the Allies began offensive with a series of battles in Tunisia that were fought not only treacherous mountainous terrain, but also on the narrow coastal plains. It was the climax of campaign that allies began from the Suez Canal and ended up on the Atlantic coast. It was also the signal of the end for the German campaign in North Africa, especially for its unfortunate Commander General Hans von Arnim. General Harold Alexander was going to be his opponent in the last onslaught of the Allies to push the Axis forces out of Africa.

In October 1944, US tropps invaded Leyte Gulf in the Philippines. What followed was the largest clash of naval arms in history: 216 US and 64 Japanese warships in a series of dramatic battles.