OPENING MOVE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 December 1940, Page 5

OPENING MOVE

WORK OF MECHANISED REGIMENT WAY CLEARED FOR DECISIVE ATTACK. TROOPS IN HIGHEST SPIRITS. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, December 12. Details regarding the manner in which the operations on the Western Desert were begun show that for several weeks a famous mechanised regiment has been engaged in harassing the enemy at one point and preventing the completion of a line of camps. Mechanised units kept open the gap in the enemy’s front positions and at zero hour on Monday the breach was still open when tanks attacked. A graphic account of the recent fighting is given in a dispatch from Reuter’s special correspondent in the Western Desert. He says that the British troops are in the highest spirits and jubilant at the successes achieved after their months of waiting. The outstanding feature of the drive on Sidi Barrani, he declares, has been the clock-like co-ordination of the Army, Navy, and Air Force. The attack began with a rapier-like thrust in the desert at Italian outposts lying inland on the escarpment. The enemy was taken by surprise, and the camp fell in two hours. It was here that an Italian general commanding a flying armoured column was killed. Next, British mobile forces made a dash to the coast west of Sidi Barrani and carried out a swift and extensive flanking movement, encircling one enemy post after the other. The drive was supplemented by a fierce direct onslaught by artillery, infantry, and armoured forces. The Navy’s contribution was a 12hour bombardment of Sidi Barrani, and the Royal Air Force concentrated on keping the Italian bombers out of the air by continuous bombing and machine-gunning of their aerodromes. Nevertheless, there was strong resistance from the Black Shirt Division. Meanwhile, strong British mechanised patrols remained on the escarpment inland keep an eye on the Italian force there, and at Maktila, 16 miles east of Sidi Barrani, the advancing British troops suddenly encountered a Libyan division. There are indications, says the correspondent, that the Italians found the British force surprising both in size and in the intensity of its attack. All the time,, in spite of dust storms which made the ' desert look like a London “pea-souper” the Royal Air Force carried on their ceaseless raids. The bombardment of Benina was probably the heaviest bombing raid ever carried out in the Middle East. Flying low, British airmen machinegunned aerodrome personnel and started a fire which was visible 60 miles away. In the words of one wing-com-mander, “a good time was had by all.” One pilot who flew over part of the fighting area said that all around were the charred remains of Italian armoured vehicles, and some undamaged vehicles were being driven away by the British.