Word: tobruk
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This was a battle that the men on the ground would have to win or lose. Correspondents were allowed to report only that the Eighth Army was strong-infinitely stronger than it was when it broke at Tobruk last June, and only weariness kept the Germans' goth Light Infantry from marching into Alexandria. The dispatches were more precise about Rommel's known ground strength: two German tank divisions, two Italian tank divisions, two German infantry divisions (one motorized), about six depleted Italian infantry divisions. Rommel met the first attack with one German and two Italian divisions, held...
Reports from Cairo made clear what those difficulties were. The British were hacking and unraveling his supply lines. In the last three and a half months Allied planes had plastered the Axis port of Tobruk with almost 4,000 tons of bombs...
Wearing khaki uniforms dyed green, newly arrived crack Australian Imperial troops (including the famed "rats" who holed in for eight months at Tobruk) launched their little offensive last week. At mountain peak No. 3 (of the six between Port Moresby and the gap at the top of the range) they seeped through and outflanked the foremost Jap positions. But the Japs, softened by strafing and bombing raids, had already withdrawn...
...Nazis finally admitted last week that A.P.'s indestructible Larry Allen is a prisoner of war (TIME, Sept. 28), but they scarcely knew what to make of him. Picked up in a boat after the British destroyer he was on had been sunk off Tobruk, the first thing he did after landing was to demand an interview with Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. The Germans, astounded by this "rather queer wish by the prisoner," turned it down...
This close call taught the 34-year-old, Maryland-born A. P. man a lesson. When he returned to the U.S. last March for his first furlough in four years, he learned to swim. This precaution may have saved his life at Tobruk. Allen remained in the U.S. long enough to collect a Pulitzer Prize for his work and to say no to the horde of book publishers, radio and lecture impresarios, who rushed at him, checkbooks in hand. The unassuming "darling" of the British Mediterranean fleet said he just wanted to go on doing his job ("I would find...