Word: alexandria
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Died. Myrta Edith Bell Lewis, 62, small, quiet, self-effacing wife of John L. Lewis; in Alexandria, Va. Daughter of a country doctor, she was a schoolteacher when she married the 27-year-old coal miner whose education had ended when he was twelve. As his wife she laid out a program of study for him, encouraged him to read, led him to the classics-subsequently could not keep him from quoting them. Well-informed in politics and labor, she never expressed her opinions in public, took small part in social affairs except as companion to her husband...
...soldiers stood in their classic and indomitable position: with their backs against the wall. West of Suez there was no other place to make a stand. Behind them was Cairo, capital of Egypt; the delta of the Nile, a great plain as large as Vermont, crisscrossed with irrigation canals; Alexandria, last major British naval base in the eastern Mediterranean. All that stood between Rommel and Suez was General Sir Harold (Rupert Leofric George) Alexander's Eighth Army. If it failed, then, in the words of one U.S. Army official last week, "God help...
...places-and they probably had a surprise up their sleeve. At best, superior Allied air power would be able to disrupt superior Axis ground power and give Allied infantry, artillery and tanks a fighting chance to turn the tide. At worst, the British would be routed, hurled out of Alexandria and Suez, and the Allies driven from the whole Mediterranean theater...
Britain still watched Egypt anxiously, but last week she felt reassured. There had been some bad moments. When Rommel took Matruh, the back streets of polyglot Cairo chattered with rumors, hissed with opportunistic plans. Toasts to the Axis rang behind closed doors. Rich Italian matrons of Alexandria loaded themselves with cakes and bonbons, piled into cars and rushed off to suburban Mex, which they understood had already been entered by triumphant troops of II Duce. Mex was full of grinning Australians. The matrons jettisoned their gifts and went home...
...Duce had expected to celebrate his 59th birthday in Egypt. When Tobruk fell he rushed through the air to North Africa to lead the victorious march into Alexandria. On the way. R.A.F. pilots knocked down a convoying plane, killing his personal chef and personal barber. Loss of the barber was not so bad, since II Duce is as bald as a monkey's bottom, but loss of the cook was dismal. Then Rommel was stopped, and there could be no triumphal procession...