Word: desertion
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Over the hill: to desert...
Beyond Bengasi the only remaining British goal was Tripoli. At first it looked doubtful whether the British would go on to take it. The way was long: 600 miles. The first 300 to Sirte were across blank desert, broken only by occasional airfields marked with white stones very much like gravestones. After Sirte the land was more hospitable, goat and camel country where the determined Italians had planted 3,500,000 date palms and 2,000,000 olive trees, and arable fields which yield a hard wheat suitable for macaroni. But even this more fruitful country seemed hardly worth taking...
...British apparently saw advantages in pressing on. At week's end they announced that advance forces had already taken el-Aghéila, 170 miles beyond Bengasi and half way across the Sirte desert. There were hints that mechanical units would press on along the coastal highway, that troops might be transported...
This anachronistic force tagged along behind a string of Free French tanks and trucks as it crept into southernmost Libya. The caravan pushed 200 miles across the desert to el-Gatrún, which the Free Frenchmen took without so much as seeing an Italian. They went 100 miles further to the more important outpost of Múrzuch, where there was both garrison and airport. When the Free French were sighted, all the Italians went into the post and shut the gates tight. The Free French men surrounded the post in mock siege, spent a day leisurely destroying hangars...
Informed that the Harvard Lampoon's editors had called her the least desirable companion on a desert island, tiny, yellow-haired Cinemactress Miriam Hopkins shrugged the shoulders Illustrator Mc Clelland Barclay once called ideal, retorted: "The Lampoon editors are absolutely right. . . . However, in some quiet little restaurant I really...