Word: wadi
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Enter R. N. As the British land forces, stung by bitter winds and flying sand, burrowed into the wadi for the night, the Royal Navy began its part. In towards the shore slipped the monitor Terror, with her the river gunboats Ladybird* and Aphis. At extreme range the Terror's big 15-inchers opened up, started chewing at the cliffs where Italian batteries were dug in. Steadily the little flotilla moved closer, bringing smaller guns into action. Within two hours the main line of the battle fleet had moved into position and started pumping shells in a whistling stream...
Bardia lies in a deep, winding wadi (river gorge) whose walls are honeycombed with stone caves. But for those caves, many more of the 20,000-30,000 Italian soldiers trapped there last week would have died. Enough died as it was under a ceaseless inferno of bombs from the R. A. F. and shells from the Royal Navy. For five days many units of the latter lay to offshore, grimly pouring broadside after broadside into the flaming town. In an extraordinarily daring exploit, one British "light vessel" (possibly a destroyer) penetrated Bardia's inner harbor...
...Bardia were two Italian divisions, remnants of a third, and escapists from the Battle of the Marmarica.* They lay in their wadi, behind a semicircle of concrete pillboxes, land mines and artillery emplacements, 15 miles in perimeter. After the British mechanized units, commanded by Major General Michael O'Moore Creagh had pinned them in, the encircled men tried to run for it, thousands at a time. As they fled on the coast road around the rim of Cyrenaica toward Marshal Graziani's main fortified base at Tobruch, 70 miles west, the R. A. F. and the mechanized British...