Word: tobruk
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Another drainage was from the Black Sea port of Odessa. There the Germans claimed they had cupped two armies. The Red Fleet, in fairly good control of the Black Sea, evacuated men by sea. "A new Dunkirk," said the Germans. "Another Tobruk," suggested the British. But Russia's jingoistic, paprika-tongued spokesman Solomon A. Lozovsky, begged to differ. "It is plain and simple Odessa,"he asserted...
...town, enduring its second siege within a year, is like an old crumbling conch shell in which some new life, some sea anemone, has tenaciously nestled. The Italians lost it after a two-week siege, but for 16 weeks the British had been surrounded in Tobruk; and last week they were more lively than ever...
Every night when the wind was not kicking up a sand, Australian, New Zealand and Indian patrols crept out from the circle of the strong points which the Eyeties had built for their defense of Tobruk. They were armed with tommy guns, grenades and bayonets. Three or four miles out they came on Italian concentrations, inched within lobbing distance, then let fly. The Italians, clumsy at patrolling and clumsier at countering it, suffered mean casualties...
These patrols were not of great military consequence; they were of less importance than most petty skirmishes on the Russian Front. But, devised in the face of appalling living conditions, executed with a certain joy, they-and Tobruk itself-were evidence of a will to survive, testimony that the besieged Australians felt they were still top dog over their besiegers...
CAIRO-Britain's empire army, unleashing a mighty "death blow" against the Italian base of Tobruk and its 20,000 to 30,000 entrapped defenders, has smashed more than five miles through the inner defenses of the Libyan strong-hold since dawn, it was stated officially tonight...