When the Battle of El Alamein commenced with a massive artillery bombardment on the night of October 23rd, 1942, Axis commanders were surprised that the British Eighth Army’s main thrust came in the north, and not in the south as had been expected. As British planners had predicted, fuel shortages kept their foes from redeploying troops from their southern sector to reinforce and meet the threat to the north. The result was a complete British victory.
A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.
I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.
A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.
