LIBYAN FORTRESS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIII, Issue 135, 10 June 1942, Page 5

LIBYAN FORTRESS

FREE FRENCH STAND READY

LONDON, June 9. Another big Axis thrust is ex- ' pected »t any moment in Libya, and ifte Free French fortress of Bte- Ifcucbeirc is standing ready for a further heavy attack. The string - bold is toreateuett vroro tae north ana tiie smith, bat the f arrisou is confident. General Koenig, commander oi lM Free French forces, today flashed this message to General Ritchie's head quarters: "The situation is not alarm ing while stocks can be replenished The forces at B.ir Hacheim have again been supplied by a column which made a long journey across the desert to give them food and ammunition. The convoy then turned round and made its'way back again. A French war correspondent says that General Koenig's men are animated by a special venom. They have a vicious desire to show the Germans, what they think of collaboration, and the whole world what the spirit of; fighting France-is worth. General ( Koenig's attitude was summed up as] fpllows;—"My orders were to hold JEJir j Baeheim; I hold Bir Hacheiro." , j An agency correspondent in the; desert says that the Germans rushed! tanks down from the Knightebridge; area to make la?t night's attack on Bir Hacheim, but the fresh Axis forces met with the same result as their colleagues did in the previous six days they had to retire after a daylong battle, and lost many motor transports through the attenion of the R.A.F. Another message said that tht battle had hardly started when British planes were on the job of attacking the enemy troops and of fighting off the dive bombers, PLATEAU FORTRESS, A journalist who has been in Bir Hacheim describes how he last saw the fortress. He said that the "beer, as our troops call it, is, almost a square plateau in the desert, about four miles along each side. The lower country around the edge of the plateau has been thickly laid with mines, and m the centre of this square desert island is the so-called "well of wisdom" from which the fortress gets its -name. Further north, there is little activity east of the enemy bulge through the .defending lines, but to the west the Allied forces are ceaselessly harrying the enemy supply lines. Enemy prisoners were > taken there yesterday. and a number of supply vehicles were damaged- Such raids,are now more important than eyer, because, the enemy seems, to be concentrating on pushing his supplies through the gap towards the battlefield instead of by the southern route ground Bir Hacheim. -