Word: railheads
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Well he knew that the British had prepared a reception for his troops as hot as the man-killing sun which danced off his pith helmet. Not without a fight would the British relinquish their airport, their desert training post and railhead of their vital line curling back 165 miles along the coast of Africa's eastern horn to Alexandria. Middle East Commander Lieut. General Sir Archibald Percival Wavell was handicapped by having far fewer troops than Graziani. Even so, they were not spear-hurling Ethiopians nor rock-rolling Albanians but a hotchpotch of crack British units, Punjabis...
...rainy season and heavy British air raids on their bases, the Italians attacked at four places along their 2,000-mile fiunt from the Red Sea to the Indiaa Ocean. On July 5, with artillery, bombing; planes, tanks and 3,000 Askari troops they assailed and took Kassala. Railhead for the line to Port Sudan, Kassala is the eastern gateway (Khartoum the western) for the Sudan's rich cotton plantations. It commands the valley of the Atbara River, a Nile tributary down which an army would move to strike at Egypt and Suez from the south. Last week...
Below, bridges repaired, the infantry brigade comes up, artillery and wire are placed on the far hill to hold the flank, a railhead is established, the airfield reconstructed, and the tanks have moved on to their next objective...
Push from Andalsnes. More important in the Allies' plan was the drive farther south. Troops landed on the quays of Molde and Andalsnes reached Dombås by train from the Andalsnes railhead. From Dåmbas junction they advanced in two directions. One force pressed north toward Storen to aid in besieging Trondheim from the south. Another contingent hurried southeast to brace the retreating Norse at Lillehammer (famed resort, home of Novelist Sigrid Undset) who faced the main German Army. In the Dovre Mountains around Dombås. German bombing planes, unopposed by Allied fighters or antiaircraft, again...
Namsos. The Germans' stronghold at Trondheim (Norway's capital when Olaf Tryggvasson was King, circa 996), commands mid-Norway's big railhead for transit across to Sweden and down to Oslo. Just east of it, at Varnes, lies mid-Norway's only big land air base. As the German invaders hustled to consolidate their position around Trondheim and establish a defense line across to the Swedish border, the Allies landed at Namsos, 100 miles north. The Namsos contingent soon made contact with Norwegian troops massing above Steinkjer, near Trondheim Fjord's head. These wiped...