Word: barrani
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...obstacles in the desert and because preparation of mechanized forces for a big offensive cannot be concealed." Two mornings later Sir Archibald Wavell called twelve crack war correspondents into his Cairo office and calmly announced: "Gentlemen, this morning at dawn our troops opened attack against Italian positions at Sidi Barrani." Then his grim mouth relaxed into a smile as he added: "It would be interesting to know whether any of you had any idea the attack started?" Most of these veteran journalists had been out in the desert for weeks, watching every maneuver - but not one answered. History knows...
...land the confident Italians began what appeared to be a giant pinch on the Canal. They drove a small British garrison out of British Somaliland, and undertook an invasion of Egypt which stalled at Sidi Barrani. Then came a turning point in the Eastern basin. Benito Mussolini called for an invasion of Greece...
...Sidi Barrani. Salum, Bardia. Tobruch and Derna fell, the fleet immediately used the larger ports to supply the advancing Army, and to drain the area of its flood of prisoners. The efficient way the fleet did this job, contrasted with the crumbling of Italian communications, accounted in large measure for the speed of the campaign...
...situation was not at all like that at Sidi Barrani, Bardia and Tobruch. There were no rigid, prepared defenses around Dérna (see map), no circles of wire and ditch. But the natural defense was rugged: a deep, wide wadi, the eroded path of an ancient stream. With more spunk than they had shown in seven weeks' war, 10,000 Italians fought to keep many more attackers from swarming into the wadi. Italian aircraft were active, tanks gave fight, artillery answered stubbornly. But numbers and more efficient supply told in the end. The town capitulated...
Mussolini Cunctator. New York Times Military Expert Hanson Baldwin said last week that when the British attack on Sidi Barrani began Dec. 9, the troops had strict orders to withdraw if that town had not fallen in three days. By last week this tentative operation and the Eritrean push (see col. 3) had grown into a campaign of conquest covering a quarter of a continent. To the always confident British this was not surprising. But the only reasonable explanation for the Italians' hasty retreat on all fronts was either that the Italians had lost their military minds or that...