Alexandria for a rest. De Guingand returned on 22 October. Contrary to his usual practice of locating himself at Main Headquarters (HQ) and paying daily visits to Montgomery at the forward Tactical Headquarters (Tac HQ), de Guingand established a small command post on the coast road near Tac HQ and those of X Corps and XXX Corps, which would be carrying out the operation. He took Richardson with him, leaving Mainwaring in charge back at Main HQ. The Second Battle of El Alamein commenced at 02:00 on 24 October. Progress was initially good but by 02:00 the following night de Guingand was sufficiently disturbed by reports indicating the attack on the southern corridor had faltered to call an 03:30 conference at Tac HQ with the corps commanders, Lieutenant-Generals Oliver Leese (XXX Corps) and Herbert Lumsden (X Corps). De Guingand had to wake Montgomery, something that he later recalled he only had to do a few more times in the entire war. Montgomery agreed with de Guingand's evaluation of the situation. Operations on the southern corridor were suspended, and the forces there pulled back. By 29 October, the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill had become concerned at the lack of progress and sent Alexander and the Minister-Resident for the Middle East, Richard Casey to investigate. Montgomery convinced Alexander that matters were well in hand but de Guingand had to call on his diplomatic skills to dissuade Casey from sending a cable to London indicating that the outcome of the battle was still in doubt. It was won on 2 November and two days later de Guingand dined with Montgomery and General der Panzertruppe Wilhelm Ritter von Thoma, the commander of the Afrika Korps, who was now a prisoner of war. Churchill ordered that church bells be rung throughout the kingdom to celebrate the victory. For his part in the battle, De Guingand received an immediate award of the Distinguished Service Order on 5 November 1942. Health issues and personal life Recurrent problems with gallstones struck de Guingand several times, often at crucial junctures and had the doctors had their way his tenure as the Eighth Army chief of staff would have been a short one. "The reaction of the bon viveur to his illnesses was unusual", Richardson later wrote, "he could not be called a hypochondriac, as there were very real, but he seemed to take an obsessive interest in their manifestations,