Word: khamsin
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...their Free French allies. Over the grey Libyan Desert the air quivered in the peak heat of the early hot season. The heat made men and machines thirstier, and the desert was stingy with water. Metal in the sun was too hot to touch. But for the moment no khamsin was blowing, no dreadful sandstorm to grind up men and machines. And it was not too hot to fight...
...force which struck both sides equally hard last week was a hot, enervating, 35-m.p.h., dust-laden, southerly wind. Arabs have named the maddening wind khamsin (which means 50) because it seems to last for 50 days. Actually it subsides in less than a week, but if it blows longer than five days, tribal law provides no punishment for distracted Arabs who slay their wives...
While the khamsin was blowing itself out, the British discussed rumors that Marshal Rommel had been recalled, possibly to command an army on the Eastern Front. It was said that his Libyan staff was now sufficiently trained to carry on without him. Rommel's smart tactics had been as maddening as the khamsin, but neither Rommel nor the khamsin made restless British troops as furious as a letter seized from a German officer of the 104th Infantry Regiment. The letter gave credit to the English as "coldblooded infighters, arrogant and proud" prisoners, but concluded: "So far his tank tactics...
This Alexandria was a focus last week. The German drive, which had swept across Libya as fast and as hot as the desert wind called khamsin, was apparently aimed straight for Alexandria. If it reached there, Britain would lose her main operating base and very likely her whole position in the Eastern Mediterranean...