VICTORY IN EGYPT "OF FIRST ORDER"

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 268, 12 November 1942, Page 5

VICTORY IN EGYPT "OF FIRST ORDER"

LONG PREPARATION Roosevelt's Fine Action When Tobruk Fell British Official Wireless Rec. noon. LONDON, Nov. 11. Mr. Churchill told the House of Commons that many things were going to happen in the next few days. The Bth Army was advancing Into Cyrenaica now that the main enemy force had been broken. Casablanca had capitulated. Bougie (between Algeria and Tunis) had been occupied. These remarkable transactions, he said, had been highly beneficial to our cause, and 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 or Egypt as a British victory of the first order. It was not generally realised how much time great opera- ' ons such as those in Egypt and North Africa took to mount. For instance, the British divisions which reinforced the Bth Army for this battle left England in May and early June. Most of the six-pounders now being used in so many hundreds were dispatched before the fall of Tobruk. Likewise, the more heavily armoured British tanks. He told how the admirable Sherman tanks reached Egypt. He was with President Roosevelt in the White House when they 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 and they were embarked, early in July, ana shipped direct to Suez under American escort. Also shipped were a large number of self-propelled 105 mm. guns. One ship of this precious convoy was sunk by a U-boat. The United States immediately replaced it with another, carrying an equal number of both weapons. N'o Prodding Needed It took four months before the results of the President's decision of 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 trovps, 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 reinforcements coming into action, five months or even more have been required.

It was apparent, therefore, how silly it was for people to imagine that the Government could act on impulse or give immediate responses to pressure concerning large-scale offensives. I certainly am not one of those who need to be prodded. In fagt, if anything, I am a prod, said the Prime Minister. Grievous though our earlier reverses were, the cost to the enemy of maintaining this African campaign had been exhorbitant. One in every three of his ships had gone to the bottom of the sea, and German and Italian shipping resources has been most severely strained, while the enemy's own U-boat activities in the Mediterranean had been considerably reduced. The Mediterranean campaign from first to last had been an immense strain on the Axis resources, and the most effective means the Allies had yet had of drawing a portion of the enemy's strength and wrath away from Russia and upon ourselves. Healing with* the co-ordinating stmtocr.v of the various Allies. Mr. Churchill said that the greatest obstacle to constant unity of the Allies was geography. We stood around Mi" circumference of a circle and ine main enemy lay in the cent re.