MANY THINGS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 November 1942, Page 4

MANY THINGS

GOING TO HAPPEN IN NEXT FEW DAVS BRITISH PREMIER’S FORECAST AFRICAN CAMPAIGNS & WAR STRATEGY. QUESTION OF AIDING RUSSIA. (British Official Wireless.) (.Received This Day, 11.15 a.m.) RUGEY, November 11. The enemy could not have found a worse place to lose a battle in than Egypt, declared the Prime Minister (Mr Churchill) opening the new session of the House of Commons. The enemy’s losses had been mortal and his air effort against Russia had been affected in the last three months.

Mr Churchill said his heart bled for Russia, but premature attacks across the Channel would have been no help to her. The attack which would be made in due course across the Channel or the North Sea required immense preparation, which was proceeding, but took time. If the enemy became demoralised, risks could be run on a large scale, but this certainly was not true now. Preparations had been very greatly advanced and enormous installations had been and were being brought into existence at all suitable ports. It would have been impossible to make an effective invasion of the Continent this summer or autumn.

As the year advanced, it became clear that' there would not be enough landing craft ready in the favourable weather months. In July it was decided, with the United States Chiefs of Staff, to hold the enemy on the French shores and to strike at the enemy southern flank in the Mediterranean. Mr Churchill said he himself went to Moscow to give this unwelcome news to Stalin, in whose wisdom and good faith he believed. The Russians bore their disappointment like men. They had faced their enemy and had now reached the winter successfully. ORDERS TO DESTROY. Orders were sent to General Alexon August 10 to destroy, at the earliest: opportunity, Rommel's army, with all its supplies and establishments in Egypt and Libya. General Alexander might very soon ask for further instructions. To celebrate the victory, bells would be rung in Britain next Sunday. The present estimate of enemy killed, wounded and prisoners was 34,000 Germans and 25,000 Italians. The enemy lost 500 tanks and a thousand guns. Our losses, although severe and painful, were not unexpected. They were 13,600 officers and men, of which 58 per cent were United Kingdom troops. WE MUST NOT RELAX. Mr Churchill said our troops were advancing into Cyrenaica now that the main enemy force had been broken. Casablanca had capitulated. Bougie, between Algeria ana Tunis, had been occupied and many things were going to happen in tne next few days. These remarkable transactions had been highly beneficial to our cause. We were entitled to rejoice, provided we did not relax. We should use the stimulus of victory to increase our exertions. Mr Churchill described the Battle of Egypt as a British victory of the first order. It is not generally realised how much time great operations such as those in Egypt and North Africa took to mount. For instance British divisions which reinforced the Eighth Army for this battle left England in May and early June. Most of the sixpounder guns we were now using in so many hundreds were despatched before the fall of Tobruk; likewise the more heavily armoured British tanks. Mr Churchill told how the Admirable Sherman tanks reached Egypt. He was with President Roosevelt at the White House when he received news of the fall of Tobruk. The Americans’ very best tanks, the Shermans, were just coming out of the factories. The President took large numbers of these tanks back from the troops to whom they had just been given. The Shermans were embarked early in July and shipped direct to Suez under American escort. So, too, were a large number self-propelled 105-millimeter guns. One ship of this precious convoy was sunk by a U-boat. Immediately the United States replaced it with another carrying an equal number of both weapons. Mr Churchill said it took four months before the results of the President’s decision on June 20 became operative, although the utmost energy and speed were used at- each stage. Records were broken at every point, in unloading and fitting up weapons and issuing them to the troops, but it was indispensable that the men should also have reasonable training in handling them. So, between the decision to reinforce the Middle East and the reinforcement coming into action, five months or even more had been required. It was apparent, therefore, how silly it was for people to imagine that the Government could act on impulse or make immediate responses to pressure concerning large scale offensives. “IF ANYTHING A PROD.” “I certainly am not one of those who need to be prodded,” said the Prime Minister. “In fact, if anything I am a prod. Grievous though our earlier reverses were, the cost to the enemy of 1 maintaining this African campaign has been exorbitant. One in every three of his ships has gone to the bottom of the sea and German and Italian shipping resources have been most severely strained, while the enemy s own U-boat activities m the Mediterranean have been considerably reduced, ine Mediterranean campaign from first to last has been an immense strain on Axis resources and the most effectiv means we have yet had of drawing < portion of tfre enemy s strength and wrath away from Russia upon oursclves ” Dealing with the co-ordination of the strategy of the various Allies, I*l Churchill said the greatest obstacle to the constant unity of the Allies was “eo£raphy We stood around the circumference of a circle. Our main enemy lay in the centre.