Word: agordat
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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British Empire forces, which had driven 70 miles into Eritrea from the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, last week took Agordat (see map, p. 23). This town, 2,000 feet up on the Eritrean plateau, is strategically placed at the junction of a railway to Massaua on the Red Sea and a new highway to Addis Ababa. Agordat was defended by one Italian division. In taking the town, the attackers claimed "many hundreds of prisoners," but the Italians were not entirely surrounded, and the main body retreated into increasingly mountainous country behind Agordat...
...With Agordat in their possession, the British were set to cut off Northern Eritrea and eventually squeeze Ethiopia. Against the day when the Ethiopian squeeze might be applied, Negus Haile Selassie and Crown Prince Asfa Wassan, a slim lad of 24 who divorced his wife be ause her father submitted to the Italians, rallied their compatriots...
...their Eritrean push, the British used a skill which was more than tactical. The region around Agordat is inhabited by a tribe of pure Hamites, direct descendants of ancient Egyptians, in religion mostly Moslem. There are also quite a few Indians in Eritrea. They do not like their Italian any more than any other white masters...
Strategic Barentu, 70 miles inside Eritrea near the Ethiopian border, fell barely 24 hours after the British capture of the railroad town of Agordat, 40 miles northward, after fierce fighting that cost the Italians heavily in dead, wounded and prisoners...
...toll of Italian dead and wounded was said to have been heavy in the fighting for Agordat, gateway to Italy's Red Sea Port of Massawa, 100 miles eastward...