Word: matruh
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...moon set soon after midnight in a swirl of blowing sand. Everything was ready. The main body had sneaked up in a remarkable rush, from Matruh the day and night before, 60 miles in one haul, and now they settled down on the cold sands for a valuable nap. Mechanized forces had deployed earlier in a sharp curve to the south and west, using the moonlight to dodge scrub and big desert boulders...
...Italy's expert in African warfare, led the spearhead of a drive from Libya into Egypt. After his first crushing spurt, he had pegged in at Sidi Barrani (see map), and his forces had been consolidating themselves there ever since. The British were 80 miles east at Mersa Matruh, the outpost to which they had decided to retire, with tip & run tactics, whenever the drive from Libya materialized. To south and east, the Italians had already wiped out French Djibouti and British Somaliland, so as to clear the rear. This gave the Italians a strong clutch...
...wanton wench was Cleopatra but a politician whose love of Egypt was greater than the love she bartered with lonely Roman warriors. How long she and Mark Antony lingered in Paraetonium (now Mersa Matruh) history has forgotten. The city crackled in the sun, crumbled into decay, remained virtually forgotten some 2,000 years until last week another Roman warrior sought to enter its now squalid streets. He was Marshal Rodolfo Graziani...
...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...
...Made a concentrated raid on the British coastal Army base of Mersa Matruh, end of the Egyptian railroad toward Libya...