Word: bardia
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...rout was terrible. While British mechanized columns pruned and hacked, the R. A. F. poured bombs and machine-gun lead on motor transport, camps, supply depots, airdromes, and on the soldierly runners. The fleet moved along, throwing everything but the gun turrets at the coastal road. At Bardia some vessels edged in just a half mile from shore and pumped their biggest shells into the town. The fleeing Italians abandoned everything, leaving large supplies of tinned food, oil, water, Chianti, mules, lorries, truckloads of documents, new tanks, guns...
British warships from Alexandria took another point-blank crack at Marshal Graziani's expeditionary base at Bardia. During the week, the Italians claimed extension of their drive into Kenya Colony to include Fort Polignac on Lake Rudolf in the north and Buna, a British air base 60 miles south of Moyale, one of the preliminary keys to the capture of Nairobi. The British retorted with a satisfying raid by the South African Air Force, which swooped on Mogadiscio, main port of Italian Somaliland, and blasted "hundreds" of military trucks assembled there for the Kenya push...
Meanwhile in Libya the British tried an offensive of prevention, knowing that General Rodolfo Graziani was massing at least two divisions at Bardia, on the coast, for a drive into Egypt. Early one morning the British Fleet based at Alexandria suddenly appeared off Bardia. On the bulletin board of one of the battleships the captain had posted a notice: "This action will be short and sharp and we shall have some fun." For 25 minutes the 15-inch guns of the battleships and the 6-inchers of the cruisers poured a steel rain into Bardia. Aerial spotters reported the damage...
...broke up this effort with a flanking attack, and the survivors took refuge in the deserted adobe Fort Capuzzo. There they still were after a thirsty week, sucking stones to eke out their water supply, which the British cut off by removing many sections of the pipeline down from Bardia. British artillery, pounding their defenses, drove them into trenches. British shells and a detachment of light tanks broke up an Italian column of 20 trucks sent to relieve the beleaguered expedition...