El Alamein – The Line of Fire How Accurate is this WW2 Movie?

Dull life in the trenches

This El Alamein film isn’t all action. In fact, there are some quieter moments – much as there were during real-life in the desert. In his letters home, Serra relays that the war isn’t what he expected. We encounter long stretches of inaction and boredom, sometimes punctuated by occasional fire from the enemy that no one can see.

The movie doesn’t shy away from the unpredictability of death, though. Its characters are unaware of the big picture, and so are the audience. We’re expected to have some knowledge of the Italian participation of war, so we don’t discover much about the battle here. Instead, we learn that the Italian soldiers weren’t just faceless troops, but young men with little to lose.

“The idea was to be right there in the trenches with them, to experience their fear of living on a razor’s edge, between life and death, to be alive one minute and to be turned to sand the next.”

— Enzo Monteleone, 2005

However, they weren’t completely powerless. Prof Ball describes the Italian war machine of the time as a “brutal colonial power”.

“They were very enthusiastic about the advance,” he adds. “It's not all doom and gloom. When they're winning it's all, ‘this is great’.”

The devil is in the details

Professor Ball notes that from a historical perspective the Italians “are very good at the details”, partly because they were responsible for the battlefield archaeology. “They’re the country that takes the most interest in Alamein, perhaps with the British, so there's a lot of Italian work on the battle. I trust [The Line of Fire] on the details.”

Indeed, several movie buffs have hailed the El Alamein film for its acute attention to detail, particularly with aspects that are easily overlooked. One such example is the ‘gorget patches’ worn by the Italian troops. Also known as colour patches or colour tabs, these insignia on the collar of a uniform indicate the battalion, division and brigade of each soldier.

Italian line infantry divisions were distinguished by large collar patches with a unique combination of colours. The common “active service” star was attached to the front of each patch. Throughout the film, we catch glimpses of the colour patch consisting of blue, green, red, yellow and white.

Only Fools and Horses

One scene involves Mussolini’s horse, which is black in the film, but had a white coat in reality. In the movie, Mussolini sends his horse to Africa to ride in a grand march into Egypt. But some critics have been doubtful as to whether the horse really was loaded into an ordinary army lorry, strewn with hay and driven by Italian truck drivers.

Pavia vs Folgore

The Line of Fire primarily focuses on the artillery unit within Pavia Division fighting alongside the Folgore Division. Professor Ball notes however that the Pavia infantry were towards the south fighting the Free French, while the Folgore paratroopers were based in the north.

“It’s a film about the Italians being…caught… right at the end… in this hell storm,” he says. “In real life, the Pavia and the Folgore started fighting each other. They hated each other!”