Word: suez
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...what Germany would get in return-which made the "easements" seem ominous. The London Times guessed that Vichy would let Germany use railways leading to Spain and airports in French-mandated Syria, next door to Axis-desired Iraq and a handy jumping-off place for attacks on the Suez Canal...
...Looking back upon the course of events, I can only feel ... if we had again to tread that stony path, even with the knowledge we possess today, I for one would do the same thing again. . . ." He promised to defend "to the death" Malta, Crete, Tobruch, the Suez and the Nile Valley...
...fall, either by storming or by incapacitation due to bombing, the British position in the eastern Mediterranean would be pretty nearly untenable. The British would then have no practicable advance naval bases, and German bombers would have almost a semicircle of air bases within easy striking distance of the Suez Canal and of Alexandria, the last intact fleet base. General Sir Archibald Wavell's lines of communication from Egypt down to the Red Sea and westward along the Mediterranean would be subject to merciless attack from only 500 miles away...
Last week, even while Crete still functioned for the British, the Nazi noose seemed to be tightening: twice German bombers visited the Suez Canal area, damaging the railways by which both U.S. and British war materials had been moving up to Egypt. Nevertheless the British, with not much but courage of the Freyberg kind to go on, were still doing a valorous defensive job throughout the theater...
...brigade remained in service in Egypt. However, Cairo reported the arrival there of U.S. materials last week, and Vichy sources said that no less than 26 U.S. merchant ships, "stacked to the funnels" with 75-mm. field guns and other materiel, and "convoyed" by U.S. naval vessels, had reached Suez. U.S. diplomats denied that materials reaching Egypt had been carried in U.S. ships. In any case, replacements could not have been sufficient to give anything like immediate parity...