The war in Iraq revived public focus on the Desert Rats whose famous battles of World War II helped turn the tide of German dominance. In Iraq, seven units of the British Army which now form the 7th Armoured Brigade, bearers of the Desert Rats insignia, were immediately engaged in some of the fiercest early fighting, ultimately taking Basra for the Allies.Nothing less was expected of this most renowned of British fighting forces which came into being as part of the Western Desert Force in 1940 and subsequently fought with Montgomery's 8th Army in the great desert battles. They underpinned epic campaigns culminating in El Alamein, where Rommel's much-vaunted Afrika Corps was poised to begin the final rout of the British in North Africa in 1942. But they met unimagined resistance from an army spearheaded by the Desert Rats.The Desert Rats were not, of course, limited to desert operations. They fought on through Italy and were there for the D-Day landings, battling their way through Holland and the final push to Berlin. Post-war, the badge of the 7th Armoured Division re-emerged in Germany as part of NATO forces during the Cold War and more recently in other major deployments in the 1991 Gulf War, Bosnia and Kosovo. John Parker draws heavily on first-hand accounts for a story that is a seminal part of modern military history. Read Less