North Africa Campaign

The North Africa Campaign was a front of the Second World War.

History

Fighting began in North Africa by 1941, where the Italians sought to extend their control over the continent. (PROSE: Warlords of Utopia) British and Australian forces, with French forces under Charles de Gaulle, clashed with the German Afrika Korps, led by Field Marshal Erwin Rommel and Albert Kesselring, the Italians and their Tuareg tribesmen allies in the Sahara Desert, Libya. Tanks and aircraft were deployed by both sides during the campaign. (COMIC: The Instruments of War, PROSE: The Dying Days) The Fall of Tobruk occurred in this theatre. (PROSE: Just War)

In November, British forces in North Africa raided the German headquarters in an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Rommel. One month later, during a lull in the fighting in Cyrenaica, Libya, the German command was infiltrated by a Rutan spy disguised as German war hero Heinz Bruckner, searching for the Sontarans' lost superweapon, the Warsong. The Twelfth Doctor, Rommel, Kygon Brox's forces of the Eighth Sontaran Battle Fleet and even the Allied forces worked together to prevent the Rutans from using the Warsong to transform Earth into a weapon that could be used in the Sontaran-Rutan War. After its destruction, the fighting in Africa resumed. (COMIC: The Instruments of War)

Brian Galway was killed in North Africa. (COMIC: Memorial) Sam Bishop's great-grandfather fought with the Eighth Army, serving in North African battlefronts such as Gazala, Tobruk and El Alamein. (AUDIO: Earthfall) Captain Jack Harkness was present at El Alamein, (PROSE: Risk Assessment) as was the Doctor during one of his first five incarnations. (PROSE: The King of Terror) The Third Doctor cited El Alamein as one of the battlegrounds on which he may have been wounded in the leg, but misremembered if it had been during the Crimean War or the Gallipoli campaign instead. (TV: The Sea Devils) The Eighth Doctor claimed he had driven an ambulance there. (PROSE: Autumn Mist) Major Dakar recalled that the British executed "traitors and cowards" at El Alamein. (PROSE: Ghosts of India)

Legacy

Sam Bishop's great-grandfather regaled the young Sam Bishop with war stories of his time in North Africa, inspiring Sam to eventually join UNIT. (AUDIO: Earthfall)