Word: hach
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Rommel's success in the recent Battle of Libya began with a miscalculation. He sent his tanks south in a wide sweep around Bir Hachėim, to outflank the British line, but his intended surprise was detected, his columns were attacked by superior forces. At that point Rommel was worsted and he began to extemporize. While his engineers cut a gap in the heavily-mined Ain el-Gazala line, he distracted the British with various false movements, ringed his gap with protective artillery, then pushed his forces on through...
...known to be a demoniac master of desert war, but neither the British nor the U.S. public was prepared for Tobruk's fall. For it followed weeks of such cheery headlines as these: Planes pound Axis units in Libya. . . . British in Libya mopping up. . . . Heroic stand at Bir Hachéim foils Rommel. . . . Axis road to Egypt barred. . . . Even two days after Tobruk fell, the New York World-Telegram still bleated: R.A.F. Blasts Nazis in Libya...
Pierre Koenig and his 3,000 Parisians, Bretons, Moroccans and Hitler-hating Germans settled down to wait for the inevitable. It was inevitable that Field Marshal Rommel, having bypassed Bir Hachéim in the expectation that it would be a pushover, only to find it a stubborn thorn, would devote his full fury to the place. Every day for ten days there had been attacks by Italian troops, stiffened by a few Germans. Every day Koenig's band had thrown the attacks back with the old French favorite, the 75-mm. cannon...
...while, the R.A.F. was feverishly busy. Gaily, pilots flew out from a field which they called Tramride. Grimly, they flew back again and renamed it Tramraid. Their job was to cut Axis supply columns, and it was urgent. They had to try to stave off the fall of Bir Hachéin for, if that hot spot fell, Rommel would have clear lines of communications for an advance on Tobruk...
There was reason. After 13 days, Bir Hachéim, the hot place, Pierre Koenig's key post, had fallen...