Word: bengasi
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Britain's Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden and Chief of Imperial General Staff General Sir John Greer Dill flew to Cairo last week. The two men carried with them a tremendous responsibility. Two weeks before, the British had captured Bengasi, and for two weeks the Imperial Army of the Nile had been consolidating its conquests. The messages these two men took from London to General Sir Archibald Percival Wavell, the discussions all three would have, and the plans Sir Archibald and his aides would then draw up -these things would decide not only the future operations of the Army...
...vindicated, Anthony Eden's faith in Sir Archibald Wavell certainly was. In the startling conquest of Cyrenaica, he had proved himself the best general the British have produced in the entire war. When war in Africa began, Archie Wavell was virtually unknown outside his profession. By the time Bengasi fell, he was world-famous...
...overture might proceed, it seemed clear that Hitler's Bulgarian grab would soon be succeeded by a wide Eastern Mediterranean push. At week's end, the great question was whether Britain's Imperial Army of the Nile, whose whereabouts have been unreported since the fall of Bengasi, was being convoyed under the guns of newly fortified Lemnos across the Mediterranean to meet the challenge...
...with Lieut. General Sir Henry Maitland Wilson as the new military governor. Shops were reopening. Looting and sabotage had been stamped out by a 6:30-p.m. curfew, the watchfulness of British patrols. Civilian-clad Italian officers on parole amicably elbowed British and Anzac soldiers on the streets of Bengasi. In the strange calm General Sir Archibald Percival Wavell was obviously collecting his forces for a new drive, but in complete secrecy. Best guesses:1) that they might press on to Tripoli or 2) cut over to Greece as the Balkans threatened to explode...
Against this ground lull, air action grew to new vigor on both sides. The British pounded Italian bases in Rhodes seven nights in a row, firing hangars and crumpling grounded planes. The Germans attacked British motorized transport in Libya, hit at Malta over & over, dropped huge parachute bombs onto Bengasi. The R. A. F. came back with an attack on the Nazi Stuka bases in Sicily. For five hours they shuttled past overhead, wheeling and diving on gasoline stores and bomb dumps. German reconnaissance pilots returned from a flight over Suez with photographs showing two vessels sunk in the channel...