Word: desertion
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Graziani, by week's end, had pushed the vanguard of his 260,000 desert troops 50 miles along the coast of northwestern Egypt to Sidi Barráni. There he stopped, or was stopped. Ahead of him, along a salt-scarred road-a three-hour run in a fast tank-lay Mersa Matruh, first major objective in Italy's drive to conquer Egypt, a prize the Fascist press at home could shout through the streets as noisily as the populace once roared at slaves in clanking chains. But Graziani waited...
Well he knew that the British had prepared a reception for his troops as hot as the man-killing sun which danced off his pith helmet. Not without a fight would the British relinquish their airport, their desert training post and railhead of their vital line curling back 165 miles along the coast of Africa's eastern horn to Alexandria. Middle East Commander Lieut. General Sir Archibald Percival Wavell was handicapped by having far fewer troops than Graziani. Even so, they were not spear-hurling Ethiopians nor rock-rolling Albanians but a hotchpotch of crack British units, Punjabis...
...Libyan naval base of Tobruch, where Graziani's main supplies were concentrated, the British claimed their bombers smashed barracks, wharves and massed trucks. British planes cracked at Sálum, others attacked Sidi Barráni. On the alert for planes, forced to keep up a desert "guerrilla-artillery" battle, Sidi Barráni also awoke last week to find the British Fleet off shore. As the sun nosed over the desert mesas, warships nosed out of a shroud of morning haze. A moment later their guns belched salvos pointblank into the heart of the city. Observers...
Even in the desert, World War II was total last week, and volleys of propaganda and politics were not wanting. Italy was extremely anxious that the 32,000 British-trained Egyptian troops should not be engaged. The Italian press cried that this was a "war for Egyptian independence"-"liberating Egypt from the oppressing domination of the English." Although the Egyptians showed no particular desire to be unyoked, the Egyptian Cabinet neither declared war against Italy nor prepared its armed forces for action. But four Cabinet members from the Saadist (nationalist) Party, traditionally anti-British, resigned on the ground that...
...followers to obey laws and cooperate with the Government while he visited the British Viceroy to "seek permission to preach nonparticipation in war." Nonparticipation, he warned his followers, was no prelude to mass civil disobedience, but fearing that without some action to push Indian independence the masses would desert him, he compromised: "I don't want to order civil disobedience. I favor individual disobedience." The wily Saint knew that individual disobedience, lacking organization, would amount to nothing. The independence movement, he admitted, could be temporarily delayed...