Word: aghelis
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...seesaw desert campaign. Sometimes they had been badly led, never had they had adequate equipment. They had retreated before Graziani singing: "Oh, Sidi Barrani-Oh, Mersa Matrûh-The Eyties will get there, then what will we do?" Then under Wavell they had driven Graziani westward to El Aghéila. Rommel had punched them back. Under Auchinleck, Cunningham and Ritchie had recovered that ground. Again Rommel had punched them back, this time destroying most of their armored force and driving them eastward to within 70 miles of Alexandria. There was doubt that they could hold the line much...
...green mountains of the Cirenaican hump sudden torrential rains slowed his progress, but he pushed on. At Bengasi invasion-wise Bedouins in flapping sheets now snapped the British thumbs-up. He reorganized at El Aghéila, where German engineers had sown the dead with booby traps. He was off again, rolling under the Marble Arch on which was inscribed: "O beneficent sun, thou seest nothing greater than the City of Rome." At Wadi el Chebir wild camels and gazelles pranced across the dreary ditch-scarred land. At Wadi Zemzem the pilgrim drew himself...
Erwin Rommel's retreat from El Aghéila had begun with an orderliness that was almost sedate. There was the suspicion that he had already withdrawn the bulk of his army, leaving only enough troops for a bluff. He sprinkled his trail with land mines and booby traps* and loped off along the coast...
Westward Rommel continued to flee until, at week's end, he was 225 miles from El Aghéila and still pelting on toward Tripoli. He might stop short of that port. He might make a stand there just to keep such a handy harbor and supply base out of General Montgomery's hands. But there were increasing signs that he might retreat all the way to Tunisia...
...Tunisian campaign was still at a stalemate (see below), but General Sir Bernard Law Montgomery continued to roll along the flat and ugly coast. Transport planes helped move up his vast and vital supplies. Last week, when his Eighth Army marched under the ludicrous triumphal Marble Arch near El Aghéila, one of several which Mussolini had erected along his African highway, he was farther west than any British commander had ever been before in the long, seesaw African campaign...