* 1943 – World War II: The U. S. Seventh Army under General George S. Patton arrives in Messina, Italy, followed several hours later by the British 8th Army under Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, thus completing the Allied conquest of Sicily.

It contributed greatly to Allied success in defeating the U-boats in the Battle of the Atlantic, and to the British naval victories in the Battle of Cape Matapan and the Battle of North Cape.

Although Henry Lumley ’ s British cavalry had managed to cross the marshy ground around the Petite Gheete, it was soon evident to Marlborough that sufficient cavalry support would not be practicable and that the battle could not be won on the Allied right.

Hermann Göring had promised the Luftwaffe would complete the destruction of the encircled armies, but aerial operations did not prevent the evacuation of the majority of Allied troops ( which the British named Operation Dynamo ); some 330, 000 French and British were saved.

Continuing Arab disquiet over Allied intentions also led during 1918 to the British Declaration to the Seven and the Anglo-French Declaration, the latter promising " the complete and final liberation of the peoples who have for so long been oppressed by the Turks, and the setting up of national governments and administrations deriving their authority from the free exercise of the initiative and choice of the indigenous populations.

* Buffalo or Water Buffalo, British designation for Landing Vehicle Tracked, an amphibious vehicle used by Allied forces during World War II

Almost half of the Allied soldiers on D-day were British.

British forces defeated the Italian army in Eritrea in 1941 at the Battle of Keren and placed the colony under British military administration until Allied forces could determine its fate.

In late 1939 he brought the Duke of Windsor back from self-impodsed exile in France and in early May 1940, Mountbatten led a British convoy in through the fog to evacuate the Allied forces participating in the Namsos Campaign during the Norwegian Campaign.

The Allied soldiers who died driving the Germans from Tuscany are buried in cemeteries outside the city ( Americans about nine kilometres south of the city, British and Commonwealth soldiers a few kilometres east of the centre on the right bank of the Arno ).

The First Battle of El Alamein ( 1 – 27 July 1942 ) was a battle of the Western Desert Campaign of the Second World War, fought between Axis forces ( Germany and Italy ) of the Panzer Army Africa ( Panzerarmee Afrika ) commanded by Field Marshal ( Generalfeldmarschall ) Erwin Rommel, and Allied ( specifically, British Imperial ) forces ( Britain, British India, Australia, South Africa and New Zealand ) of the British Eighth Army commanded by General Claude Auchinleck.

The Allied Desert Air Force ( DAF ) was concentrating fiercely on his fragile and elongated supply routes while British mobile columns moving west and striking from the south were causing havoc in the Axis rear echelons.

The Rock was a key part of the Allied supply lines to Malta and North Africa and base of the British Navy Force H, and prior to the war the racecourse on the isthmus was converted into an airbase and a concrete runway constructed ( 1938 ).

Total Allied deaths were 43, 000 British, 15, 000 French, 8, 700 Australians, 2, 700 New Zealanders and 1, 370 Indians.

War raged between the Axis Powers ( Germany, Italy, and Japan ) and the Allied Forces ( British Empire, Soviet Union, and the United States ).

Counterattacks of British Allied forces from Egypt, commanded by Wavell and their successful two-month campaign in ( Tobruk, Benghazi, El Agheila ), and the counteroffensives under Rommel in 1940-43, all took place during World War II.

Since Greece, a maritime country, could not oppose the mighty British navy, and citing the need for a respite after two wars, King Constantine favored continued neutrality, while Venizelos actively sought Greek entry in the war on the Allied side.

Allied leaders of the Sicilian campaign in North Africa ; ( front row, left to right ) General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder, 1st Baron Tedder | Arthur Tedder, General Sir Harold Alexander, Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham, 1st Viscount Cunningham of Hyndhope | Andrew Cunningham, ( top row, left to right ) Harold Macmillan, Major General Walter Bedell Smith, and unidentified British officers ; 1943

When Eisenhower was appointed Supreme Allied Commander for the planned Normandy Landings he suggested that Alexander become ground forces commander, as he was popular with both British and US officers.

British and French leaders believed that the deterrent value of the “ peace front ” could be increased if Turkey were a member and if the Turkish Straits were open to Allied ships.

At this time, the German Abwehr was active in Spain, particularly around the British naval base of Gibraltar, which its agents hoped to watch with cameras and radar to track Allied supply ships in the Western Mediterranean.

The Allied fleet defeated the demoralized remnants of the Persian fleet in the Battle of Mycale — on the same day as Plataea, according to tradition.

During this time he taught himself the Portuguese language to read the poet Camões in the original ; as insufficient Russian-speaking officers were available at the War Office, his knowledge of the Russian language and textual analysis skills were used to translate a Russian parachute training manual-a task he completed after 11pm on top of his normal duties, deducing the meaning of many technical terms from the context ; he was convinced that the Soviet Union must eventually enter the war on the Allied side.

The bombardment against Allied positions began at 0410 and the subsequent infantry attack displaced Portuguese forces by 0800, exposing the left flank of the 165th.

Soult now knew a successful attack against Lisbon was beyond his means with the forces proposed — there were 30, 000 Allied troops and six major fortresses between his army and the Portuguese capital — but he had received orders nonetheless and felt obliged to do something.

Alten's men were placed in Albuera itself, while Hamilton's division along with most of the Portuguese cavalry formed the Allied left wing to the north of the village and Major General William Stewart's 2nd Division formed up on a hill just to the west of Albuera.

Cole's 4th Division was ordered to form up behind the cavalry, and Hamilton's Portuguese moved to the Allied centre to hold Albuera and act as a reserve.

Leaving Cole's division in place ( according to Beresford, to protect the Allied flank from further cavalry attack, although Wellington was of the opinion that Beresford was actually securing his line of retreat ), Beresford instead called upon Hamilton's Portuguese Division, but Hamilton had moved closer to Albuera to support Alten in fending off Godinot's attack, and the orders took a long time to reach him.

" This admonition was unnecessary though: Latour-Maubourg quickly placed his cavalry between the chasing Allied divisions and the fleeing French infantry, and aborting their pursuit the British and Portuguese instead drew up on the heights they had just won.

Allied losses amounted to 5, 916: 4, 159 British, 389 Portuguese and 1, 368 Spaniards.

As the government of Portugal declined to cooperate with the Allies, a force composed of the 2 / 2nd Independent Company and Dutch forces occupied Portuguese Timor, without any resistance being offered by the Portuguese Army or officials ; the civilian population, both Portuguese and Timorese, generally welcomed the Allied soldiers.

Fortuitously, the French struck the least prepared unit in the Allied army — a Portuguese militia unit — and routed it.

Nevertheless, the victory was a welcome boost to Allied morale and had helped persuade the Portuguese King, Peter II, to abandon his earlier treaty with the French, and join the Grand Alliance.

* June 9 Afonso Costa ( Finance Minister ) and Augusto Soares participated in an Allied Economic Conference where the Allies decided that as condition for peace, Germany would have to return the territories of Alsace-Lorraine to France ( occupied since 1871 ) and Kionga in Portuguese Mozambique to Portugal ( occupied since 1894 ).

In March he was confirmed as second in command of the Allied Army and rejoined the campaigning army, and assisted in the liberation of Spain by the British and Portuguese armies.

From one of the varandas in the Palace of Belém, Sidonio Pais reads a telegram from the King of England celebrating Portuguese participation in the Allied victory in World War I

In fact, in 1943 the Portuguese Government leased to Britain what became a major Allied air and naval base in the Portuguese islands, the Azores.

On 1 November, the Allied high command approved the issuing of weapons to Portuguese officials, a policy which had previously been carried out on an informal basis.

* 1916 – World War I: Battle of Romani – Allied forces, under the command of Archibald Murray, defeat an attacking Ottoman army under the command of Friedrich Freiherr Kress von Kressenstein, securing the Suez Canal and beginning the Ottoman retreat from the Sinai Peninsula.

The overwhelming Allied victory ensured the safety of Vienna from the Franco-Bavarian army, thus preventing the collapse of the Grand Alliance.

The following day, the Allied army swung away from the Rhine towards the hills of the Swabian Jura and the Danube beyond.

A French reconnaissance under the Marquis de Silly went forward to probe the enemy, but were driven off by Allied troops who had deployed to cover the pioneers of the advancing army, labouring to bridge the numerous streams in the area and improve the passage leading westwards to Höchstädt.

Tallard wrote a report to this effect to King Louis that morning, but hardly had he sent the messenger when the Allied army began to appear opposite his camp.

If Holstein-Beck's Dutch column were destroyed, the Allied army would be split in two: Eugene's wing would be isolated from Marlborough's, passing the initiative to the Franco-Bavarian forces now engaged across the whole plain.

Two hours later the Duke, accompanied by the Dutch field commander Field Marshal Overkirk, General Daniel Dopff, and the Allied staff, rode up to Cadogan where on the horizon to the westward he could discern the massed ranks of the French army deploying for battle along the four mile ( 6. 4 km ) front.

Moreover, this disposition – concave in relation to the Allied army – gave Marlborough the opportunity to form a more compact line, drawn up in a shorter front between the ‘ horns ’ of the French crescent ; when the Allied blow came it would be more concentrated and carry more weight.

Although Villeroi had the option of enveloping the flanks of the Allied army as they deployed on the plateau of Jandrenouille – threatening to encircle their army – the Duke correctly gauged that the characteristically cautious French commander was intent on a defensive battle along the ridge-line.

At 13: 00 the batteries went into action ; a little later two Allied columns set out from the extremities of their line and attacked the flanks of the Franco-Bavarian army.

Notwithstanding the lack of infantry support, de Guiscard threw his cavalry forward in an attempt to split the Allied army in two.

On the Western Front, no Allied army had penetrated the western German frontier, and on the Eastern Front, Germany had already won the war against Russia, concluded with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.

They defeated the allied army at the Battle of Fleurus, leading to a full Allied withdrawal from the Austrian Netherlands.

Following the Allied invasion of Normandy ( June 1944 ), the German army was pushed back on all fronts until the final collapse in May 1945.

In the summer, with the Americans arriving at 10, 000 a day, and the German reserves exhausted, it was only a matter of time before multiple Allied offenses destroyed the German army.

Thus, in August 480 BC, when the Persian army was approaching Thessaly, the Allied fleet sailed to Artemisium, and the Allied army marched to Thermopylae.

The Allied victory at Salamis ended the immediate threat to Greece, and Xerxes now returned to Asia with part of the army, leaving his general Mardonius to attempt to complete the conquest.

At the decisive Battle of Plataea, the Allies destroyed the Persian army, whilst apparently on the same day, the Allied navy destroyed the remnants of the Persian fleet at the Battle of Mycale.

* April 25 – The Allied army is defeated by the Bourbon army at Almanza, Spain, in the War of the Spanish Succession.