23 October links four very different moments of war. In 1642 the first pitched battle of the English Civil War was fought at Edgehill: Prince Rupert's cavalry swept the field and then vanished, Parliament's infantry came close to capturing the king's sons, and night fell on a draw. In 1942 a barrage of hundreds of guns opened the Second Battle of El Alamein, the twelve-day fight that turned the war in North Africa. In 1944 two American submarines struck the first blow of the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the largest naval battle in history, which ended Japan's fleet as a fighting force. In 1956 a student march in Budapest became the Hungarian Revolution, which Soviet tanks crushed within days.
Edgehill, 1642: the king marches on London
After years of dispute between King Charles I and Parliament, war came in 1642. The king recruited an army in the West Midlands and the Welsh Marches and marched on London, and Parliament sent its army under Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, to stop him. On 23 October the two armies met below the escarpment of Edgehill in Warwickshire, between Kineton and Radway. The date is in the Julian calendar, which England used until 1752.1
The armies were evenly matched, though the figures differ: the Oxford Companion to British History gives each side about 12,000 men, the BCW Project about 14,000, and Newcastle University's British Civil Wars site 12,400 Royalists against 15,000 Parliamentarians. The king was stronger in cavalry.2
The Royalist command quarrelled on the morning of the battle. The Earl of Lindsey wanted the infantry drawn up in the Dutch manner, while Prince Rupert and Lord Forth backed the Swedish formation. The king sided with Rupert and Forth, and Lindsey resigned and went to fight at the head of his own regiment of foot. According to the BCW Project, Forth took his place as lieutenant-general. Sir Jacob Astley led the Royalist foot into action, and before the advance he prayed: "Oh Lord, thou knowest how busy I must be this day. If I forget thee, do not thou forget me. March on boys!"3
Rupert's charge and the fight for the standard
The battle opened in the afternoon with an exchange of artillery. Then Rupert led the cavalry of the Royalist right against the Parliamentarian horse facing him and broke it, while Henry Wilmot's horse routed the other wing. But the Royalist troopers galloped on after the fugitives, and many stopped to plunder Essex's baggage at Kineton. The historian Malcolm Wanklyn, quoted by Mark Cartwright, judged that "this failure to retain a true reserve almost certainly lost Charles the chance of a decisive victory".4
With the king's horse gone, Parliament still had cavalry in hand. Sir William Balfour's horse broke a Royalist brigade and overran the king's guns, and with Sir Philip Stapleton's troopers he fell on the flank of the Royalist foot. In the fighting around the king's own regiment, the standard-bearer Sir Edmund Verney was killed and the royal standard was taken. Lindsey was mortally wounded and captured. Parliamentarian troops came close to capturing the king's young sons, Charles and James, who were watching from behind the lines. A popular story says that Verney's severed hand was found still gripping the standard, which the Newcastle site treats as a myth.5
The standard was recovered before the day was out. As the Royalist horse drifted back, too tired to charge again, the fighting died away in the dark. Both armies spent a bitterly cold night on the field.6
The cost of Edgehill, and a road left open
There is no agreed count of the dead. Newcastle University's site puts the dead at about 500 and the wounded at about 1,500, while Mark Cartwright gives about 1,500 casualties in all.7
Both sides claimed victory, and neither had won one. On 24 October Essex fell back to Warwick, which left the road to London open to the king. Charles moved on to Oxford, which became his base, but his leisurely advance gave Parliament time to strengthen London's defenses. For the whole story, see our article on the Battle of Edgehill.8
El Alamein, 1942: Montgomery's set-piece battle
In the summer of 1942 Erwin Rommel's German and Italian army drove deep into Egypt and was halted at the British line at El Alamein. Bernard Montgomery took command of the British Eighth Army in August 1942, stopped Rommel's last offensive at Alam Halfa within weeks and then refused to be hurried. He insisted on a long period of preparation and chose the full moon of 23 October for his attack.9
By then, by the National Army Museum's count, he had over 190,000 men from across the British Empire, Greece, Poland and France, more than 1,000 tanks and 900 artillery pieces, against 116,000 Germans and Italians with 540 tanks. Short of fuel for a battle of movement, Rommel had dug in behind minefields that his troops called the Devil's Gardens, about half a million mines in all. Rommel himself was on sick leave in Germany, and General Georg Stumme commanded in his place.10
The barrage of 23 October
At 9:40 in the evening of 23 October the British guns opened fire. Mark Johnston of the Australian War Memorial counts 880 guns, while John Rickard notes that it is usually called a 1,000-gun barrage but puts the real number closer to 800. Cartwright calls it the largest artillery attack since the First World War. Behind it, in the first hours of 24 October, infantry and engineers began Operation Lightfoot, clearing corridors through the minefields for the tanks.11
The armor jammed in the corridors and lost heavily to anti-tank guns, and Montgomery turned to what he called "crumbling", a grinding attrition of the Axis line. On the other side, Stumme died of a heart attack on 24 October, when his car came under fire near the front. According to Rickard, Rommel reached his headquarters from Germany on the evening of 25 October and issued a two-line order: "I have taken over the army again. Rommel".12
Trig 29: the Australians in the north
The 9th Australian Division held the northern, coastal flank. Just after midnight on 26 October the 2/48th Battalion attacked Trig 29, also called Point 29, a slight rise overlooking flat, rocky country, and took it.13
In that attack Private Percy Gratwick's platoon lost its leaders and, according to the Australian Dictionary of Biography, was cut down to seven men by heavy fire. Gratwick charged the German posts alone with grenades, rifle and bayonet, destroyed two of them and was killed in the attack. His mates advanced and the ground was taken. He was awarded the Victoria Cross after his death.14
According to Mark Johnston, Rommel launched no fewer than 25 counterattacks against Trig 29, and an Australian signaller wrote on 28 October: "Trig 29. The worst spot I have been anywhere in this war." The Australians were about a tenth of the Eighth Army's strength but suffered about 22 percent of its casualties, and 620 of them died in the October battle.15
Supercharge and the breakthrough
Montgomery paused, regrouped and launched Operation Supercharge on the night of 1 to 2 November. According to Rickard, on 2 November Rommel learned that the Afrika Korps would have only 35 tanks running the next day and ordered the first retreat. Hitler's order to hold reached him on 3 November. "The battle is going very heavily against us," Rommel wrote that day. On 4 November the British broke through.16
The motorized Axis units escaped, but most of the Axis infantry was captured. By about 11 November the prisoners numbered some 30,000.17
The cost of El Alamein, and the end of the beginning
The Eighth Army lost about 13,500 men: 2,350 killed, 8,950 wounded and 2,260 missing. British estimates based on intercepted signals, quoted by Cartwright, put German losses at 1,149 killed, 3,886 wounded and 8,050 captured, and Italian losses at 971 dead, 933 wounded and 15,552 captured. Cartwright also quotes a British corporal, C. W. Mears: "There are some lonely graves in the desert, both our own boys and the enemy, just a tin hat and cross denote the fallen".18
Speaking at the Mansion House in London on 10 November, Churchill said: "Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning". For more, see our article on El Alamein and Montgomery vs Rommel.19
Leyte Gulf, 1944: Japan stakes its fleet
In October 1944 American forces landed on Leyte, in the Philippines. Japan answered with its Sho-1 plan, staking practically its whole remaining fleet on one decisive battle. Admiral Ozawa's carriers, which had only about 100 aircraft and few trained aircrew, were bait to draw William Halsey's Third Fleet away to the north. Meanwhile Vice-Admiral Takeo Kurita's battleships, among them the giants Yamato and Musashi, were to come through San Bernardino Strait, and a smaller force through Surigao Strait, and fall on the landing fleet in Leyte Gulf.20
Palawan Passage, 23 October: the first blow
Before dawn on 23 October the American submarines Darter and Dace, patrolling together off Palawan, found Kurita's force. Darter's torpedoes sank the heavy cruiser Atago, Kurita's flagship, and crippled the Takao, and Dace sank the Maya. Kurita moved his flag to the Yamato.21
On 24 October Halsey's carrier aircraft caught Kurita in the Sibuyan Sea and sank Musashi. According to Spencer Tucker and Theodore Wilson, she took nineteen torpedoes and nearly as many bombs, and about half her crew died. Kurita turned away, and Halsey took his fleet north after Ozawa's carriers, leaving San Bernardino Strait unguarded, a move Tucker and Wilson call a grave tactical error.22
Surigao Strait and Cape Engaño
On the night of 24 to 25 October the Japanese southern force steamed into Surigao Strait, where Oldendorf's old battleships, cruisers and destroyers of the Seventh Fleet were waiting. In what Tucker and Wilson call a classic example of crossing the T, it was destroyed, and only one destroyer escaped. Far to the north, on 25 October, Halsey's aircraft sank all four of Ozawa's carriers off Cape Engaño.23
Samar, 25 October: the tin cans charge
Kurita had turned again and passed through San Bernardino Strait unseen. Early on 25 October, off the island of Samar, he fell on Taffy 3: six escort carriers, three destroyers and four destroyer escorts under Rear-Admiral Clifton Sprague.24
Sprague's ships were not built for a surface battle. Commander Ernest Evans of the destroyer Johnston, who had told his crew "I intend to go in harm's way", broke formation and charged the Japanese cruisers, laying smoke, firing and launching torpedoes. Aboard the destroyer escort Samuel B. Roberts, Lieutenant Commander Robert W. Copeland told his crew they were going into "a fight against overwhelming odds from which survival cannot be expected". Some accounts give those words to Evans.25
According to Task & Purpose, when Japanese ships closed on the escort carrier Gambier Bay, Evans ordered: "Commence firing on that cruiser, draw her fire on us and away from Gambier Bay." Japanese fire finally left Johnston dead in the water, Evans gave the order to abandon ship, and he was not among those rescued. Evans was awarded the Medal of Honor after his death.26
Gambier Bay, Johnston, Hoel and Samuel B. Roberts went down, but three Japanese cruisers were sunk too. Then Kurita, believing that he faced a strong carrier force, broke off and turned away. The same day the first kamikaze attacks of the war hit the escort carriers, and St. Lo blew apart and sank. The National WWII Museum calls her the first American ship sunk by kamikaze attack, and 746 of her 889 men survived.27
The cost of Leyte Gulf
John Rickard lists Japan's losses as three battleships, four carriers, ten cruisers and nine destroyers, about 300,000 tons of shipping, against 37,000 tons on the American side, including one light carrier and two escort carriers. Tucker and Wilson estimate roughly 10,500 Japanese seamen and aviators lost, and The History Reader some 10,000 Japanese dead, while both put American losses at about 2,800 men.28
In Tucker and Wilson's words, the battle "ended the Japanese fleet as an organized fighting force", and it opened the way for the American reconquest of the Philippines. For more, see our article on the Battle of Leyte Gulf and our article on William Halsey.29
Hungary, 1956: a march becomes a revolution
On 23 October 1956 students gathered at the statue of Józef Bem in Budapest in solidarity with the reform movement in Poland. The students' Sixteen Points demanded economic reform, the removal of Stalinist leaders and the withdrawal of Soviet troops. By evening a huge crowd had gathered outside parliament, about 200,000 according to PAP, and demonstrators pulled down the giant statue of Stalin, leaving only his boots.30
Outside the radio building, where the crowd demanded that its demands be broadcast, officers of the State Security Police (ÁVH) guarding the building opened fire, and the first demonstrators were killed. The protest became an armed uprising. Imre Nagy, a reform Communist, returned as prime minister. After a ceasefire on 28 October Soviet troops pulled out of Budapest, and on 1 November Nagy declared Hungary neutral and announced that it would leave the Warsaw Pact.31
4 November: Operation Whirlwind
Before dawn on 4 November the Soviet army attacked Budapest in an operation codenamed Whirlwind. From 5:20 that morning Nagy's last radio message was broadcast from a studio in parliament. Soviet troops, he said, had attacked the capital to overthrow the lawful Hungarian government: "Our troops are fighting. The Government is in its place".32
János Kádár was installed in power. Nagy took refuge in the Yugoslav embassy, and on 22 November he was lured out and arrested. He was tried and hanged on 16 June 1958.33
The cost of 1956
Harrison King gives 2,600 Hungarian dead. A secret 1957 report of the Hungarian statistical office, cited by PAP, counted at least 2,700, with about ten times as many wounded, and declassified Soviet documents record 669 Soviet soldiers killed, 51 missing and 1,450 wounded. About 200,000 Hungarians fled abroad; the European Network Remembrance and Solidarity gives about 150,000. For more, see our article on the Hungarian Revolution of 1956.34
