El Alamein to the river Sangro

First edition, no large paper copies.
Publisher’s navy blue cloth, lacks to head and tail of spine, one joint partly split. 
Black morocco box by Goy & Vilaine lined in blue sheep.
Inscribed by Montgomery - then military governor of the British Zone in Occupied Germany - to General Koenig, governor of the French Zone at the time:
“To General Koenig who served under my command in the Eighth Army.
With my very best wishes. Montgomery of Alamein Field-Marshal / Berlin 30.3.46.”
This copy further bears a one-page autograph letter from the author on the headed paper of the Headquarters of the British Army on the Rhine to General Koenig, presenting him with the inscribed book. 
A hero of the first great victory for the Free French, General Koenig was the subject of some of the finest pages of General de Gaulle’s memoirs:
“In his justice, the God of Battles was to give the soldiers of Free France a great fight and a great victory. On the 27^th May, Rommel took the offensive. Bir Hakeim was under attack…While the drama of Bir Hakeim unfolded around the polygon of 16 square kilometers held by Koenig and his men, I was back in London, weighing up everything that hung on what was happening there…To the two enemy emissaries who demanded surrender, Koenig had it made clear that he hadn’t come for that…Three, four, five times a day the Stukas and the Junkers bombarded them, in a squadron of a hundred airplanes…”Hold out for another six days!” Koenig’s Allied orders had said on the evening of the 1^st June. The six days had passed. “Hold out another forty-eight hours!” General Ritchie asked…Koenig’s resistance now took on a capital importance.
“A heroic defense by the French!”, “A magnificent feat of arms!”, “Germans beaten outside Bir Hakeim!” blared the trumpets of news. The success at Bir Hakeim signaled to all the world the start of France’s recovery. “But what haunts me nonetheless is the health of the defenders…The whole world, clearly, was expecting their resistance to be broken at any moment. But then General Sir Alan Brooke sent me a message in the evening to say that “General Koenig and a significant portion of his troops made it to El Ghobi, beyond the reach of the enemy.” I thanked the messenger, gave him his leave, and closed the door. I was alone. Oh! My heart beating with emotion, I had tears in my eyes, tears of joy!” Of the 5,500 men in the 1^st light mechanized division before Bir Hakeim, Koenig – after 14 days of fighting – brought 4,000 of them back intact.”
On the 12^th July 1942, Churchill declared in the House of Commons: “The Free French Forces resisted at Bir Hakeim with the greatest courage. In holding up the German advance for two weeks, they allowed us to win time, the time to bring troops from Palestine and to reinforce Egypt.”
A month later, Montgomery was appointed head of the British 8^th Army, engaged in the North African campaign; he had all their plans and papers for a possible retreat destroyed. He inflicted a decisive defeat on the Afrika Korps at the battle of El-Alamein, in which General Koenig took part at the head of the 1^st Free French Division, which had survived Bir Hakeim.
These battles put an end to Hitler’s African plans and ushered in the start of a reversal of fortunes between the Axis and Allied forces.
The decisive part played by France in this first victory contributed to its full recognition as an Allied military partner. “There had to be a grain of sand to check the Italian and German advance, which only reached El-Alamein after the arrival of fresh British divisions: that grain of sand was called Bir Hakeim” (General Saint-Hillier, October 1991).
Under Montgomery’s command, Koenig took part in the whole Tunisian campaign (April to May 1943). He remained close to the British government, being appointed in March 1944 the French Provisional Government’s representative to General Eisenhower (Supreme Allied Commander), and at the same time supreme commander of French Forces in Great Britain and commander of the French Forces of the Interior (FFI).
It was as military governors of the British and French Occupied Zones that the two men  met in 1945. On that occasion, Montgomery, recently made Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, inscribed this collection of wartime memories to Koenig.
An exceptional historical document presented by the victor of El Alamein to the victor of Bir Hakeim.