Word: bengals
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Ceylon for Wavell. At the southern nub of India, where the Indian Ocean meets the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea, lies a focal center of General Wavell's task: Britain's island of Ceylon...
Last week, when the Japs bombed the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal, they were softening up a way station on the invasion road to Ceylon. And Ceylon, just 60 miles off southern India, is a way to invasion of India itself. It could even be a substitute for invasion. With eastern India bottled up, with ships and planes in position on Ceylon to raid even the Indian routes to the vital ports of Bombay and Karachi on the Arabian Sea, Japan could well let India soften and crumble under blockade...
...almost certain that the Japanese would drive on northward, do their most to block these lifelines. With the same stroke, they would further brace themselves for a sea-and-air drive across the Bay of Bengal at India. The Allies, with all Burma gone, would find it harder than ever to defend uncertain India, harder still to place bombers, tanks and artillery in China to answer the flames of Toungoo...
...Malayan forces would be free to attack Java, Burma, perhaps Australia. With evacuation almost impossible, it would deal a heavy blow in manpower. Some 60,000 British troops were on the island. And it would give Japan a free passage to the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal. Knowing these things Singapore's defenders fought bravely and well, but bravery was not enough...
...title is a fair sample. The Nikolides, Greeks who live downriver from a village in Bengal, never directly appear in the story. They are significant only because two English children are sent to their home for breakfast while a sick pet is put out of the way. For one of the children, eleven-year-old Emily, the meal is, to be sure, important; it marks "the last hour of her childhood." Yet the title typifies a certain trickiness that runs throughout the story...