Word: alexandria
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...equilibrium in the narrow position they fought for. Something had to give. If Rommel gave, he might have to run all the way back to Libya to prepare another assault. But if Britain's General Auchinleck gave, it would be downhill for Rommel to Alexandria. The shadow still hung heavy over the Middle East...
Trouble in Egypt. Meanwhile the U.S. Government, alarmed by Germany's Egyptian advance, had been fanciful enough to suppose that Pierre Laval might be willing to move French warships in Alexandria, Egypt* to the U.S., Martinique, or some other Western Hemisphere port for the war's duration. Britain said it would scuttle the ships rather than have them fall into Axis hands. The U.S., recovering its sense of reality, said it would back any such action. Laval replied that the French crews would fight any attempt at seizure. As the U.S. pondered a diplomatic break with Vichy, word...
General Auchinleck, in command of the battered British Army which had been pushed back within fighter-plane range of Alexandria, began to harass the Germans to keep them from resting. His New Zealanders dove into the southern flank of the German line, pushing it back. Rommel patiently shifted one of his crack Nazi mechanized divisions from the short to the long side of his line, to prevent being hemmed in too close to the sea. Then, at dawn one morning, Auchinleck's linesmen cracked the short side, drove through a division of Italians, advanced five miles in 90 minutes...
VICHY--Chief of Government Pierre Laval demanded today that Britain release the nine French warships interned at Alexandria since 1940 and warned Britain and the United States that any attack on them might result in "grave consequences...
...began seeing to it that the remainder of the British Army was not allowed to rest and recoup by retiring. In a week he drove the British from Halfàya Pass, from Sidi Barrani, from Matrûh, from Fuka. Only at El Alamein, 70 short miles from Alexandria, were Rommel's men and tanks so exhausted that he had to pause to reform...