BRITISH RESISTANCE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 218, 13 August 1940, Page 7

BRITISH RESISTANCE.

SOMALILAND ADVANCE. EMPIRE TROOPS GATHERING. LONDON, Aug. 12. It is announced in Cairo that troops from various parts of the Liupire have assembled to reinforce the Somaliland Camel Corps, which is headed by Brigadier A. R. Cliater, who has had 20 years’ experience of Middle East and African conditions. The British resistance to the Italian advance in Somaliland has thus far been confined to bomoing the columns, which are moving through parched country and which throw up clouds of dust, making clear targets for the R.A.F. Tlie Dai!v Mail’s Cairo correspondent says that the Italian forces from Hargeisa and Oadweina are in the fringes of the lulls in which an engagement with British forces is imminent. ... Scouts and reconnoitring planes report the Italians’ every movement. Snipers hidden in the barren foot-] hills pick off soldiers and relentlessly cut off and round up stragglers. At night Somali warriors creep up and overwhelm sentries and outposts and cause havoc in the enemy camps. Stunted thorn trees provide the only protection for the Italians, but the British have built stone redoubts and machine-gun nests. A Nairobi message states: Our around trops reconnoitring toward j Dobel (30 miles south of Moyale), in j Kenya, found it strongly held by the enemv.”