Word: basra
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Iraq is the most vital city in the Middle Eastern theater: Basra, the river port which U.S. and British engineers have turned into a busy reception point for war shipments through the Persian Gulf. At the military worst, it would be to Basra that the Tenth Army would retire, for with Basra would go the Persian Gulf, and its access to South Africa, the South Atlantic, the U.S. and Britain. The battle for the bridge would first be a battle for overland rail and highway routes from Basra through Bagdad to Persia, the Caspian and Russia; then, at the blackest...
...desert, were 250,000 German airborne troops, carefully trained by the parachute-glider expert, Lieut. General Kurt Student, for a swift thrust. Egypt, the Levant, the fat oil fields of Iraq were within their range. The United Nations, recognizing the threat, poured planes and men up from Suez and Basra. The U.S. pulled its crack airman, Major General Lewis Hyde Brereton, out of India, put him in command of its Middle East Air Force. Thus India was further weakened and General Brereton was in a spot that could get hotter than anything he had seen since he and his Flying...
...October three or four vessels used to lie off Basra port in the Persian Gulf, waiting for the packers to send out the first full cargoes of dates. Within a few hours of each other they would get away in the annual race for New York. Usually a British Strick and a German Hansa liner vied for the lead; first one in with his 5,000 tons of dates got a premium of about $1.75 per ton. And Hills Brothers, biggest U.S. date importer (Dromedary), gave a handsome loving cup to the winning captain...
...British appointed a transport expert, Brigadier General Sir Godfrey Rhodes, as director of transportation through Iran. Within a few days complete plans had been drawn up. It was decided to improve two Persian Gulf ports, Iran's Bandar Shahpur and Iraq's Basra (see map). Road and rail links with Teheran and Tabriz would be improved or completed as soon as possible. Auxiliary lines, from India via Baluchistan or Afghanistan, and from the Mediterranean via Syria or Palestine, may also be developed. But all this would take a long time...
Finally the enemies brushed in Iraq. First-line German planes, Heinkel bombers and Messerschmitt fighters hurried to attack the British at their Habbannia airport. German cadres of officers headed Iraqi troops for new infantry attacks near Basra. The British counter-bombed the Luftwaffe bases. The Fleet Air Arm planes flew 160 miles up the Tigris to bomb oil tanks at Amarah. R.A.F. fliers caught convoys of French motor trucks carrying Arab volunteers from Syria to Iraq...