DESERT RATS

byname of The Seventh Armoured Division, a group of British soldiers who helped defeat the Germans in North Africa during World War II. The Desert Rats, led by General Allen Francis Harding, were especially noted for a hard-fought, three-month campaign against the more experienced German Afrika Korps, led by General Erwin Rommel (The Desert Fox). The term Rats of Tobruk, a moniker applied by the Nazi propagandist broadcaster William Joyce (Lord Haw-Haw), referred more generally to any of the Allied troops (including Australian, British, and Polish units) who defended Tobruk, Libya.