Imperial War Museum/Australian War Memorial
Study Tour Information

Crete and El Alamein, September 2002

IWM/AWM Tour Party, El Alamein Train Station

Building on the success of previous visits to the battlefields of the Western Front, Gallipoli and Normandy, this September a staff study tour will be undertaken in conjunction with the Australian War Memorial to Crete and El Alamein. Both locations are central to the history of the Commonwealth's involvement in the Second World War, with the operations on Crete marking one of the darkest periods of 1941 and the Allied offensive at El Alamein one of the key turning points of the Second World War.

The tour will take place from 21 to 29 September and will include three days in Crete (22 to 24 September) and three in El Alamein (26 to 28 September). The two destinations will be linked by an overnight flight from Athens to Cairo on 24/25 September. A detailed itinerary is currently being agreed with the AWM. However, the time on Crete will focus on the three main areas of Maleme, Rethymon and Heraklion with additional time in Hania and Sfakia if possible. El Alamein will include visits to the startlines for Operations Lightfoot and Supercharge, as well as the sites of individual episodes of the battle such as Point 29 and Snipe.

The aim of the tour, as in earlier years, is to provide staff with an opportunity to develop a deeper understanding of these two pivotal events within the Museum's terms of reference, both through their own research and discussions with fellow curators and historians on the sites where the events themselves took place. With this aim in mind, each participant on the tour will be expected to deliver a battlefield 'stand' as part of the tour's itinerary. Each 'stand' will be a short paper of around 10-12 minutes duration bearing upon a particular aspect of the campaign which the participant will have researched themselves.

For the IWM, the tour will be led on Crete by Brad King, the Keeper of the Photograph Archive, and in El Alamein by Laurie Milner of the Research and Information Department. In addition to them the Museum is able to offer ten places for the tour. As far as possible within this number, it is hoped that the composition of the tour will reflect the wide range of staff who work within the five sites. However, it is likely that a significant number of participants will be drawn from the Collections Division, whose archives and collections include material and artefacts relating to Crete and El Alamein. Consideration will be also given to those who have been unable to secure places on previous tours.

For more detail on the tour itinerary, click here.