Word: eritrea
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...long tentacles of empire wrapped, the complexity wriggled, and the small eyes in the compact head stared defiance. In Libya the Axis fought against Australians, the tough colonists of empire (see p. 22), and against Free Frenchmen, auxiliary believers in empire (see p. 24). In Eritrea the Axis fought against imperial experience, which used religion as a weapon (see p. 22). In Ethiopia and Italian Somaliland, the Axis faced black men as well as white (see p. 24). The Axis knew that the only way to kill this thing before it was itself dismembered by the tentacles...
British Empire forces, which had driven 70 miles into Eritrea from the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, last week took Agordat (see map, p. 23). This town, 2,000 feet up on the Eritrean plateau, is strategically placed at the junction of a railway to Massaua on the Red Sea and a new highway to Addis Ababa. Agordat was defended by one Italian division. In taking the town, the attackers claimed "many hundreds of prisoners," but the Italians were not entirely surrounded, and the main body retreated into increasingly mountainous country behind Agordat...
With Agordat in their possession, the British were set to cut off Northern Eritrea and eventually squeeze Ethiopia. Against the day when the Ethiopian squeeze might be applied, Negus Haile Selassie and Crown Prince Asfa Wassan, a slim lad of 24 who divorced his wife be ause her father submitted to the Italians, rallied their compatriots...
...their Eritrean push, the British used a skill which was more than tactical. The region around Agordat is inhabited by a tribe of pure Hamites, direct descendants of ancient Egyptians, in religion mostly Moslem. There are also quite a few Indians in Eritrea. They do not like their Italian any more than any other white masters...
...estimated half of Mussolini's East African army--about 100,000 troops --were said to face entrapment in Eritrea, while other Italian forces were reported in retreat from Western Ethiopia and from Ethiopia's southern frontier...