When was the Battle of Mersa Matruh?

It was fought from 26 to 28 June 1942, with the breakout of the trapped British X Corps on the night of 28 to 29 June, at Mersa Matruh on the Egyptian coast.

Who won the Battle of Mersa Matruh?

The Axis. Erwin Rommel's army drove the British Eighth Army out of its position and back to El Alamein.

Why did the British lose at Mersa Matruh?

Auchinleck had decided to retreat to El Alamein, but Rommel attacked first, and confused and late orders sent X Corps and XIII Corps in different directions, leaving X Corps cut off.

How many prisoners were taken at Mersa Matruh?

John Rickard of HistoryOfWar puts the number of prisoners taken by Rommel at about 7,000.

What happened after Mersa Matruh?

The Eighth Army fell back to El Alamein, where Auchinleck stopped Rommel in the First Battle of El Alamein in July 1942.

Battle of Mersa Matruh, 1942: Rommel's last victory over the Eighth Army

Quick answer

What happened at the Battle of Mersa Matruh?

From 26 to 28 June 1942, after the fall of Tobruk, Erwin Rommel's exhausted Axis army attacked the British Eighth Army at Mersa Matruh on the Egyptian coast. General Claude Auchinleck, who had just taken personal command, had already decided not to make a stand there, but Rommel struck before the new plan could take effect. Confused orders left X Corps cut off around Mersa Matruh while XIII Corps retreated; X Corps broke out at night and lost about 7,000 prisoners. The Eighth Army fell back to El Alamein, where Rommel was finally stopped.¹

In June 1942 the war in North Africa turned sharply against Britain. At Gazala, west of Tobruk, Rommel had outflanked the British line and destroyed most of their armor, and on 21 June he took Tobruk itself with its garrison of 33,000. Britannica's account of the campaign calls the loss Britain's worst military disaster of the war after the fall of Singapore.²

Rommel pursued at once. Britannica notes how much the stores taken at Tobruk helped him: Fritz Bayerlein, chief of staff of the Afrika Korps, estimated that 80 percent of the corps' transport at the time consisted of captured British vehicles.³

A position no one wanted to hold

On 23 June, with Tobruk gone, Auchinleck, the commander-in-chief in the Middle East, got permission to fall back from the frontier to Mersa Matruh, almost halfway to Alexandria. John Rickard of HistoryOfWar writes that the army's commander, General Neil Ritchie, planned to fight there much as he had tried to hold Tobruk: one division in the fortified box at Mersa Matruh, the rest of X Corps north of the coastal escarpment, and XIII Corps to the south.⁴

On 25 June Auchinleck took personal command of the Eighth Army. Britannica says he decided to fight a more mobile battle around El Alamein instead of standing at Mersa Matruh. On 26 June, Rickard writes, he ordered that if Rommel attacked, the army would fall back to the El Alamein position, whose southern flank rested on the impassable Qattara Depression, and he scrapped the boxes that had been used at Gazala.⁵

Rommel's army was worn out. Rickard gives the Afrika Korps about 60 tanks and 1,500 infantry, the 90th Light Division 1,000 more, and the whole German force some 3,400 infantry; the Italian XX Corps had 44 tanks. Its strongest arm was its 330 guns. Rommel's plan was to outflank the position and cut the coast road east of X Corps.⁶

Two corps, two directions

The attack began on the afternoon of 26 June. On 27 June the 90th Light Division drove toward the coast road while the 21st Panzer Division passed north of the New Zealand Division at Minqar Qaim and then attacked it from the east. The New Zealanders held, but their commander, General Bernard Freyberg, was badly wounded; Winston Churchill, the Churchill Project at Hillsdale College notes, cabled him his good wishes.⁷

Rickard describes the British reaction as botched. Auchinleck wrongly believed XIII Corps was about to be encircled and at 3 p.m. ordered X Corps to attack south to relieve it. At 7 p.m. the 90th Light reached the coast road. At 7:20 the XIII Corps commander, General William Gott, ordered his divisions to retreat without checking with army headquarters, and the order for X Corps to withdraw did not reach it until 4:30 the next morning.⁸

So the night of 27 June saw the British moving in two directions. X Corps attacked south and gained nothing. XIII Corps went east, and the New Zealand Division broke out straight through the 21st Panzer Division, inflicting heavy losses on its infantry. The battle honour description kept by the Queen's Royal Hussars Museum sums up the result: the enemy broke through between X and XIII Corps and cut off X Corps in Mersa Matruh.⁹

The breakout

On 28 June X Corps was surrounded, defending a perimeter of 30 miles. At noon Auchinleck ordered it to break out that night with support from XIII Corps, but XIII Corps was not told until 3:30 in the afternoon, when most of it was already heading east from Fuka. The breakout began at 9 p.m. with no support. The corps split into columns; some got away untouched, others were captured, and one drove through Rommel's own headquarters. Rickard puts the prisoners taken by Rommel at about 7,000.¹⁰

The position was not stabilized, in the words of the regimental battle honour, until the El Alamein line held by XXX Corps was reached. By 30 June, Britannica writes, Rommel was barely 60 miles from Cairo, and in Egypt the news caused a brief panic.¹¹

It was Rommel's last victory over the Eighth Army, Rickard writes. His army was nearly spent, and his first attacks on the El Alamein position were thrown back. Through July Auchinleck held the line and struck back, until both armies were exhausted and Rommel's drive into Egypt was over.¹² › El Alamein, 1942