Word: messina
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Sicilian needed to be told that his three-cornered Trinacria, 75 miles from Africa across the shallow Straits of Pantelleria, and two miles from Europe across the deep Straits of Messina, possessed strategic significance.* He remembered too well the prewar days when the French in Tunis, the British in nearby Malta and the Italians in Sicily had eyed each other warily while feverishly building forts and airfields. Too recently had he watched Sicily-based Stukas cut at will the lifeline of the British Empire as it curved past Sicily on its way to Suez. Control of Sicily, for a nation...
Next day, able Michael Chinigo (International News Service) went into Sicily with assault troops, was wounded in wrist and arm by Nazi shellfire, moved ahead anyway, later entered Messina and Palermo with advanced patrols...
...booby traps delayed these troops, but the delays were not serious. Holding southern Calabria and moving into Apulia, the British held very little of Italy. But that little was secure, it was open to as many more men as the Allied commands cared to send across the Strait of Messina, and to enlarge their conquest the invaders had only to keep on marching...
General Dwight David Eisenhower of the U.S. Army went to Messina last week and decorated the commander of one of the U.S., British and French armies serving under him. That commander was General Sir Bernard Law Montgomery. On Sept. 2 Montgomery went to bed at his usual time, 10 p.m., having already written and issued an order to his troops...
...Good luck, and God bless you all." That night Monty's Britons and Canadians moved across the docks and beaches to their landing boats. The boats, group by group, turned toward the near shore of Italy. The night was clear and starry. Across the Straight of Messina, only two to twelve miles wide, the men in the boats could see the rocky outline of the Calabrian peninsula. Dawn was touching the sky and the shore when the first invaders landed on the chosen beachhead, a ten-mile strip of destiny around the port of Reggio Calabria...