Montgomery took command of the 8th Army just ten and a half weeks before he launched the attack that became known as the Battle of Alamein (to some historians, second Alamein). It was the last of three distinct encounters fought over the same stretch of Egyptian desert in the summer and autumn of 1942. Together they were decisive for the war between Britain and Germany. Although the end did not come for a further two and a half years, what Churchill said later was broadly true (ignoring the battles against the Italians alone), that: before Alamein we had never had a victory; after Alamein we never had a defeat.