Early last week correspondents motored at their peril on a road near Beurát-el-Hsun, between the British Eighth Army and the Afrika Korps’ line east of Tripoli. Late in the week the same correspondents, venturing out again, saw signs left by British sappers: “Road free of mines as far as three miles east of Beaurát.”
A captured airdrome a few miles behind the Eighth Army’s forward line was a mess of ploughed furrows and Nazi mines one day. Four days later it was cleared of mines, the runways were ready for R.A.F. and U.S. planes. Munitions, gasoline and men moved up in a vast and orderly flow, steadily preparing for General Sir Bernard Law Montgomery’s next move against Marshal Rommel. U.S. bombers and fighters from Tunisia, approximately 575 miles northwest of the Eighth Army, joined the R.A.F. from Libya in a fierce attack on Tripoli. The Berlin radio interpreted the signs to mean an imminent renewal of the British assault and pursuit in Libya.
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