Word: anzac
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Middle Eastern Front, where besieged Anzac troops in Tobruk continue to weather an average of ten air raids a day, Royal Australian Air Force pilots were credited with downing eleven enemy planes for every loss to themselves...
...British charged that the Germans would make captives walk before them as human shields; the Germans charged that disguised British would wave the swastika in apparent triumph on a hilltop, and when the Germans rallied around the British would cut them down. The British charged that the Germans used Anzac uniforms; the Germans charged that the British tortured prisoners...
April 14-20. Under fearful bombing, shielded by a gallant Anzac rear guard, the British withdrew to Thermopylae, where the New Zealanders held the right to the sea, the Australians held passes to the left. Here it was that Imperial artillery fire was spectacularly effective, holding the enemy for four days and drawing German testimonies to the good marksmanship...
Thermopylae was the key to the week's action. By the admission of the Germans' modest and honest communiques, British-Anzac resistance at the pass held up the Nazi advance-which did not succeed in taking the heights by assault-for many hours: hours enough to turn the evacuation of the main British force from a slaughter to an almost orderly retirement...
...continent down under, the scattered cities and distant towns celebrate yearly with prayers, parades and boutonnieres of wattle* Australia's most important holiday, Anzac Day. Australians like to recall that it was on April 25, 1915, when Australian and New Zealand troops landed at Gallipoli, that the youthful nation "first got into trouble." Last week on Anzac Day, Anzac troops were again in trouble, fighting the last cruel hours of their desperate delaying action at Thermopylae, and Australians' anxiety for the safety of their soldiers and security of their nation ran high...