Word: salum
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...ever jocular British. Both were big naval rifles, emplaced ashore and manned by seamen from the opposing fleets. Lizzie was Italian, Bill a Britisher.* Savagely they hurled huge shells in & out of the besieged Italian stronghold of Bardia, Lizzie occasionally lobbing a few 15 miles along the coast toward Salum, which until Bardia should fall was the British column's sole supply port...
...Battle of the Marmarica in which, after slicing through Capuzzo (in the line of forts guarding Libya's eastern border), savage little squadrons of fast British tanks and Bren gun-carriers whipped around the port of Bardia, outflanking it as they had outflanked Sidi Barrani and Salum...
Rout. The fighting was taking place on the coastal plain, which the Italians call the Marmarica. Some 30 miles inland from Buqbuq an escarpment juts suddenly above the desert, 300-600 feet high. This escarpment runs diagonally towards the coast and meets it at Salum, hard by the Libyan border. Were it a man-made barrier like China's Great Wall, the escarpment could be no more effective as a wall against land warfare. At Salum just two precipitous gullies run from the plain to the top of the plateau and Libya. Into those bottlenecks the British chased...
This week Italian communiques admitted that the British had crossed the border, and that there was fierce fighting in the Salum-Bardia-Fort Capuzzo triangle. Italians tried to break up British naval bombardment of the area by sending in the submarine Naiade. Destroyers screening bigger vessels closed in on the Naiade and sank her at once. The R. A. F. carried on tirelessly, and the bag of Italian planes grew into the dozens...