Word: tobruch
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Four days after Tobruch, Dérna fell. The British and Australians had expected duck soup at Dérna, but they found the toughest meat of the Libyan campaign...
...situation was not at all like that at Sidi Barrani, Bardia and Tobruch. There were no rigid, prepared defenses around Dérna (see map), no circles of wire and ditch. But the natural defense was rugged: a deep, wide wadi, the eroded path of an ancient stream. With more spunk than they had shown in seven weeks' war, 10,000 Italians fought to keep many more attackers from swarming into the wadi. Italian aircraft were active, tanks gave fight, artillery answered stubbornly. But numbers and more efficient supply told in the end. The town capitulated...
...cocky Aussies entered Tobruch in a burlesque of glory. Along the way some of them sat down and calmly had a snack of bully beef. In town a previously captured Australian airman in blue trousers, a blue sweater and a British Army cap, who had persuaded many Italians to cease firing, greeted the attackers in the principal square: "Welcome, pals! Come right in-the town's yours." An Aussie soldier hauled down the Italian flag and hauled up his broad-brimmed hat in its place. Another changed the name of the main street from Via Mussolini...
...heard this tale, Benito Mussolini had no idea that any flag but the Italian would be raised over Derna in his lifetime. He proceeded to subsidize Italian farmers to colonize the place. But last week British advance units swept on from Tobruch, 95 miles to the outskirts of Derna. They found the place practically undefended. The farmers and most of the town's population of 21,500 had been evacuated. The main body of the Italian Army had moved on toward Bengasi. It looked as if the place was British for the asking...
...full-out assault is made on Malta, it may be not only practice for an attack on Britain but a test of whether the Axis will ever be able to make successful assaults from the air on Gibraltar, Alexandria, Suda Bay, Tobruch, other big and little naval bases; whether, in short, the Axis can make the Mediterranean its sea by making the air above an Axis...