One of the most important early operations of the Greek resistance movement (in which Velouchiotis and his fighters, after negotiations with the British, agreed to participate alongside Napoleon Zervas's republican EDES resistance forces and twelve British saboteurs under the leadership of Major E. C. W. "Eddie" Myers) was the blowing-up of the Gorgopotamos railway viaduct, south of Lamia, on November 25, 1942 (Operation Harling). The destruction of the viaduct cut the single Thessaloniki-Athens rail line, thus the line connecting the Balkans with southern Greece, but did not disrupt any supply lines—as would have been the case had it happened, as the British intended, two months earlier—to Erwin Rommel's German forces in Northern Africa, as it took place one month after the commencement of the El Alamein battle on October 23, 1942, in which Rommel was badly defeated by the British.