Word: tobruk
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Second Push. The announcement of General Ritchie's appointment was timed to coincide with Britain's second offensive last week: from Tobruk westward. The offensive was comparatively successful. It swept 44 miles west of Tobruk this week, isolating German units at El Gazála. Axis pockets southeast of Tobruk were cleaned out by Australian and South African reserves brought up from the rear...
...German officer was escorting 20 British prisoners to the rear near Tobruk. The British kept fanning out; the German would round them up, but they would spread again. Suddenly two of the British cut & ran. The German fired a burst over their heads with a light machine gun. Hearing the shots, the entire personnel of an Italian artillery battery popped their hands up from behind some nearby rocks, surrendered to the running Britons...
...King's tanks and all the King's men ranging across the Libyan Desert had not succeeded, in three weeks of fighting, in achieving a single major aim of British strategy. The one apparent success, the relief of long-besieged Tobruk (TIME, Dec. 8), was last week negated by the Germans, who cut the relieving corridor. The two hoped-for successes, bottling the German tank forces and then destroying them, were at least postponed by the same act of cutting. It was accomplished by a convergence on Sidi Rézegh, southeast of Tobruk, of the three main...
Containing Moves. When they had recovered from the first shock, the German armored forces took the initiative. They had three aims: 1) to engage and destroy as many British tanks as possible south of Sidi Rezegh; 2) to maintain a channel to the west below Tobruk, through which infantry and some mechanized forces could escape; 3) to create a diversion behind the British lines. This last move gave the British a short, sharp scare. Tank patrols actually penetrated several miles into Egypt before the British threw them back...
Blocking Moves. Fighting next settled down to a duel of attrition. The British stuck by their original bet-that if they could isolate the Germans east of Tobruk, they would eventually wear them down. The German tactic was to join all forces into one phalanx of machinery (south of Gambut) and take on the smaller British units one by one. Because the British were trying to maintain an encirclement, they necessarily had to scatter their forces. This gave the Germans, concentrating the remnants of one Italian and two German mechanized divisions, the advantage of being able to attack a brigade...