TROOPS WITHDRAWN FROM BRITISH SOMALILAND

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 August 1940, Page 5

TROOPS WITHDRAWN FROM BRITISH SOMALILAND

For Service in More Important Areas OPERATION CARRIED OUT SUCCESSFULLY ALL EQUIPMENT EITHER TAKEN AWAY OR DESTROYED The British evacuation of Somaliland has been successfully completed, Daventry reports. A War Office statement says that originally the British positions in Somaliland were based on a scheme of close Franco-British co-operation. The French forces were the pivot of the whole position and with the withdrawal of France half the available forces were lost. Various alternatives were open—to send reinforcements sufficient to ensure the colony’s safety, which would have entailed using important reserves and weakening other centres more important to Britain’s war effort, an immediate evacuation without fighting, or the removal of the small force in Somaliland and using it to inflict maximum losses on the enemy. The third course was decided upon. The force was successfully withdrawn, with all guns, except two lost in the early part of the action. A great part of the equipment was also evacuated and the remainder was destroyed. The British troops carried out the duties assigned to them with conspicuous bravery and inflicted very heavy losses on the enemy, out of- all proportion to those suffered by the British troops.