Visitor of the Month

Members of the College and the community received a first-hand account of the fighting around El Alamein, Montgomery vs. Rommel, when Lt. Charles G. Bolte '41, on leave from the British Army, delivered a public lecture in Dartmouth Hall. Giving a detailed and personal account of the action, supplemented by a number of amusing anecdotes, Lt. Bolte presented to his audience a graphic picture of life on the North African front, the military strategy involved in the defeat of Rommel, and the character of the men who made the British victory possible.

Moving from the specific to the general, Bolte closed his lecture with a discussion of the significance of the war as a democratic battle and the responsibilities of his generation in the world to be after the war.

Lt. Bolte, with two of his classmates and two Harvard men, received a special dispensation to join the King's Royal Rifle Corps of the British Army and sailed for England immediately following their graduation in 1941. After training in the British Isles, they went to North Africa in the summer of 1942 with the British Middle East Forces and took part in the heaviest of the fighting for the defense of Egypt.

LT. CHARLES G. BOLTE '41