She was the John Harvey, one of those Atlantic sea-horses that had sailed to Bari to bring beans, bombs, and bullets to the U.S. Fifteenth Air Force, to Field Marshal Montgomery's Eighth Army then racing up the calf of the boot of Italy in that early December of 1943.

He saw action in the First World War, where he was seriously wounded, and during the Second World War he commanded the Eighth Army from August 1942 in the Western Desert until the final Allied victory in Tunisia.

He subsequently commanded the Eighth Army in Sicily and Italy before being given responsibility for planning the D-Day invasion in Normandy.

In 1942, a new field commander was required in the Middle East, where Auchinleck was fulfilling both the role of commander-in-chief Middle East Command and commander Eighth Army.

He had stabilised the Allied position at the First Battle of El Alamein, but after a visit in August 1942, the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, replaced him as C-in-C with Alexander and William Gott as commander of the Eighth Army in the Western Desert.

Montgomery's assumption of command transformed the fighting spirit and abilities of the Eighth Army.

The only common commander for Montgomery's all infantry and all armour corps was the Eighth Army Commander himself.

Rommel attempted to turn the left flank of the Eighth Army at the Battle of Alam Halfa from 31 August 1942.

By the time the offensive was ready in late October, Eighth Army had 231, 000 men on its ration strength.

He was recalled to advise the British forces in the Malayan Emergency and the U. S. Eighth Army in the Korean War.

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.

Following its defeat at the Battle of Gazala in June 1942, the British Eighth Army had retreated from the Gazala line to Mersa Matruh, roughly inside the Egyptian border.

On 25 June, General Claude Auchinleck — Commander-in-Chief ( C-in-C ) Middle East Command — relieved Ritchie and assumed direct command of Eighth Army himself.

X Corps meanwhile, having made an unsuccessful attempt to secure a position on the escarpment, were out of touch with Eighth Army from 19: 30 until 04: 30 the next morning.

The British Army in Egypt recognised this before the war and had the Eighth Army begin construction of several " boxes " ( localities with dug-outs and surrounded by minefields and barbed wire ), the most developed being around the railway station at Alamein.

Rommel had driven them forward ruthlessly, being confident that, provided he struck quickly before Eighth Army had time to settle, his momentum would take him through the Alamein position and he could then advance to the Nile with little further opposition.

Rommel's plan was for the 90th Light Infantry Division and the two Afrika Korps armoured divisions — 15th and 21st Panzer — to penetrate the Eighth Army lines between the Alamein box and Deir el Abyad ( which he believed was defended ).

To relieve the pressure on the right and centre of the Eighth Army line, XIII Corps on the left advanced from the Qattara box ( known to the New Zealanders as the Kaponga box ).

Meanwhile, the Eighth Army was reorganising and rebuilding, benefiting from its short lines of communication.

The Eighth Army now enjoyed a massive superiority in material over the Axis forces: 1st Armoured Division had 173 tanks and more in reserve or transit, while Rommel possessed only 38 German tanks and 51 Italian tanks although his armoured units had some 100 tanks awaiting repair.

Once more, the Eighth Army had failed to destroy Rommel ’ s forces, despite its overwhelming superiority in men and equipment.

The Eighth Army was exhausted, and on 31 July Auchinleck ordered an end to offensive operations and the strengthening of the defences to meet a major counter-offensive.

The Eighth Army had suffered over 13, 000 casualties in July including 4, 000 in the New Zealand Division, 3, 000 in the Indian 5th Infantry Division and 2, 552 battle casualties in the 9th Australian Division ) but had taken 7, 000 prisoners and inflicted heavy damage on Axis men and machines.

The Eighth Party Congress in 1919 formalized this reality and re-established what would later on become the true center of political power in the Soviet Union.

Justice Brennan also wrote that he expected no state would pass a law obviously violating any one of these principles, so court decisions regarding the Eighth Amendment would involve a " cumulative " analysis of the implication of each of the four principles.

Justice Scalia ( joined by Chief Justice Roberts ) wrote in dissent that " the proposed Eighth Amendment would have been laughed to scorn if it had read ' no criminal penalty shall be imposed which the Supreme Court deems unacceptable.

The three armies would maintain their historical designation as the First, Second and Fourth Red Armies until Communist military forces were nominally integrated into the National Revolutionary Army, forming the Eighth Route Army and the New Fourth Army, during the Second Sino-Japanese War from 1937 to 1945.

If the First Army turned to the southwest instead of advancing directly westward toward Königsberg, they would appear on the Eighth Army's extreme left flank, allowing for either a counterattack against the Eighth, or alternately turn north toward Königsberg from the undefended south.

The U. S. First Army would enter at Kujūkuri, sweep across the Bōsō Peninsula, and meet the U. S. Eighth Army at Tokyo.

The land was bounded by what would become 21st and 24th Streets, from the Hudson River to Eighth Avenue.

Note: On October 6, 2008, it was announced that the Eighth Air Force would become part of the new Air Force Global Strike Command.

Eighth Army also devised a deception scheme involving false troop movements and ammunition dumps to give the impression that the main attack would be through the British XIII Corps front.

The primary strategic bombing force against Nazi Germany would be the Eighth Air Force, and he named Spaatz to command it and Eaker to head its Bomber Command.

On Eighth Army's far left flank the Canadians continued their wide sweep but it was becoming clear that as German units settled into their new positions in north eastern Sicily the Army would not have sufficient strength to carry the whole front.

Because the bridge was the only crossing on the river, and would give the Eighth Army access to the Catania plain, its capture was expected to speed the advance and lead to the eventual defeat of the Axis forces in Sicily.

It consisted of the American Seventh Army, commanded by Lieutenant General George S. Patton, which would land in the west between Licata and Scoglitti, and the veteran British Eighth Army, commanded by the experienced General Bernard Law Montgomery, which would land in the south east between Cape Passero and Syracuse.

The American 82nd Airborne Division would land in support of the Seventh Army, while the British 1st Airborne Division conducted brigade-sized landings along the eastern coast to support the Eighth Army.

Its capture would give the Eighth Army access to the Catania plain, to enable them to continue their advance northwards ; its destruction would seriously hamper the advance.

Once the parachute brigade had captured the bridge, they would then have to defend it until relieved by units of the Eighth Army advancing from the landing beaches.

The British Eighth Army consisted mainly of infantry, tanks and heavy weapons but were light on any form of mechanical transport, so any advance by the 50th Division would have to be conducted on foot.

In 1998, the Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Bajakajian that the government may not confiscate any money from an individual for failure to report it on a CMIR, as such punishment would be " grossly disproportional to the gravity of offense " and thus unconstitutional under the Excessive Fines clause of the Eighth Amendment.

In my view, a prison sentence for such conduct — certainly a sentence of long duration — would create a serious Eighth Amendment issue.