BARDIA GARRISON

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXIII, 2 January 1941, Page 6

BARDIA GARRISON

HOPELESS POSITION ITALIAN “FLYING CIRCUS” BIG STAND AT TOBRUK EXPECTED [U.P.A.-By Electric Telegraph-Copyright J (Received 2nd January, 1.30 p.m.) LONDON. Ist January, latest information discloses that Bardia garrison consists of remnants of four divisions, numbering 20.000 men. The town’s defences consist of forty forts .inked up by barbed wire with an anti-tank ditch sixteen feet wide. Each fort holds 30 to 40 men The “Daily Mail’s” Cairo correspondent says : “The British commanders are reckoning with the possibility that the defenders will realise the hopelessness of their position and surrender in time. As the days pass and a big attack has not been launched, the defenders must know that it will be the more shattering when it comes. “Once daily the Italians send out what the British have dubbed a ‘flying circus.’ It consists of about a dozen bombers escorted by a crowd of fighters. It makes a stately demonstration flight round Bardia. drops a few bombs, and retires to Tobruk, but the I circus has been noticeably more nervous and less stately in the last few days j because of the more intensified British groundfire. Many captured Italian ofI fleers declared that Marshal Graziani I intends to make a big stand at Tobruk for which reason Bardia has been ! thrown to the wolves. Marshal Graziani is now facing the problem of guarding Libya’s western frontier more strongly than ever. The latest German demands against Vichy and General Weygand’s continued presence in Africa has seriously complicated the Italian plans. British salvage squads are working day and night collecting, classifying and repairing captured vehicles. Hundreds are still lying in the desert, many of them bearing the slogan, ‘Alexandria by Christmas.’ “Groups of prisoners continue to straggle in, most of them hoarsely crying for water.”