AN ALLIED GOAL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 November 1942, Page 4

AN ALLIED GOAL

IN NORTH AFRICAN CAMPAIGN - 11 1 —— NAVAL BASE OF BIZERTA. VITAL LINK IN MEDITERRANEAN CHAIN. Axis concern to keep the Allies out of Bizerta is as well-founded as the Allied desire to occupy the port. Long regarded by France as her Mediterarnean naval base second in importance only to Toulon, it is a heavilyfortified and potentially . formidable striking point on the Tunisian coast at the entrance to the Mediterranean narrows. As a complement to Malta, only 300 miles away, it could turn a sinister face to the Italian end of the Bizerta is not on the more popular tourist routes of the North African coastline, but was known to .Allied seamen of the last war, when it provided a point of assembly for convoys and a base for patrolling naval craft. The development of ail* power has brought about a manifold increase in its military value. Even regarded only as another link in communications, possession of it must rank high.

PICTURESQUE TOWN.

The town is not large in relation to the great commercial port of Algiers, its normal population being some score of thousands, mainly Arabs, but a war-time influx of Europeans, such as occurred in 1914-18, would again alter its superficial appearance Visitors under those conditions will know it as a typical Eastern contrast of modernity and squalor against a background of ancient history. A war time picture of Bizerta shows modern shops and well-paved streets; attractive gardens splashed with burning sunshine and cleft with deep shadows; by-ways thronged with the motley and colourful crowds of the French African colonies; picturesque Zouaves. Spahis, Senegalese and Legionaires; uniforms of dark blue, sky blue and khaki; naval men in while suits and blue collars, the French crested with gay red pompoms; whiteclad civilian administrators and business men in sun helmets; street of loud mechanical music and gaudy women. But there are dull days, too, when the sand, wind-borne from the desert, lashes across the town and when the ships on the 50 square miles of water that form its magnificent harbour close their ports and batten down, in spite of the stifling heat, to keep out the swirling grit. Then, the camel train from the desert sways into town and the beasts slump down thankful for shelter. As a link in the chain of Mediterranean communications in the last war the powerful radio station at Bizerta played an important part for the Allies. Its gruff voice, characteristic of the French radio of the times, was a welcome note in the daily chorus of war warnings which helped unescorted merchantmen to avoid known areas of U-boat activity. In those days of comparatively short-range radio, too, it frequently proved an invaluable point of radio'contact for some ship beset by the enemy beyond the range of its immediate base. It may yet again turn a sympathetic ear to British seamen in distress.