Word: aegean
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Balkans. The Germans retook most of the Dalmatian coast from Yugoslav guerrillas. The Germans also regained Leros (and claimed Samos) from luckless, ill-supported British soldiers who attacked Hitler's Aegean outworks last month, never had a chance to keep them...
...British on Leros were desperate. Hemmed in by Germans landing from the sea, bombed and strafed by Germans commanding the air, the British defended their lonely little island in the eastern Aegean until they were slow with exhaustion. Their Italian co-belligerents fought with nontraditional bravery. A few audacious British naval craft helped a little. Long-range R.A.F. fighters helped but not enough, from their too-distant bases...
Trouble loomed from the outset. Soon after Italy capitulated, a handful of British airborne troops took a handful of Dodecanese and Aegean islands off Turkey's west coast. Their aim: air bases, harbors from which to harass from the rear the Nazis' outer chain of Balkan defenses-the islands of Rhodes, Scarpanto and Crete...
Last week the Germans threw parachute troops, dive-bombers and seaborne reinforcements against British and Italian troops defending nearby Leros. The Nazis said flatly that the island had fallen, boasted that the British Aegean gains had been reduced to the islands of Samos, Nicaria and Castelrosso. The British admitted that the Germans had made progress from their beachheads on Leros, did not boast about the chancy, raggedly conducted operation in the Aegean...
Also full of potentialities were the Balkans. The Aegean Islands led to Salonika and the Vardar Valley. .The Balkans bubbled with rebellion, ready to turn on the German the minute his hand loosened its grip...