SOUTHERN THEATRE: Simmering

Italy’s portion of the Axis war on Great Britain continued last week to simmer on the back of the Mediterranean stove, evidently waiting for the Vienna chefs to season their Balkan stew (see p. 24), for cooler weather in the Egyptian desert, for the end of the rains in Ethiopia, for Germany to hamstring the British at home or join in a Southern Theatre attack. To keep the pot respectably warm, the Italian Air Force performed a few missions:

>For the umpteenth time made passes at Malta (out of which it has signally failed to drive the Royal Navy and the R.A.F.).

>Attacked British convoys (still playing freely in eastern Mediterranean to & from Balkan ports).

>Bombed Haifa again (claimed to have caused the British to shut off their Iraq oil pipeline).

>Took new whirls at the Alexandria base.

>Made a concentrated raid on the British coastal Army base of Mersa Matruh, end of the Egyptian railroad toward Libya.

>For the first time raided Port Said, north terminus of the Suez Canal (and said they cut the Egypt-Palestine rail-road where it crosses the Canal near Ismailia).

>:Machine-gunned a medical mission at Doro, deep in the Sudan, killing Dr. & Mrs. Robert Grieve of Spokane, wounding the Rev. & Mrs. Kenneth Oglesby of Brooklyn, when they ran out waving a U. S. flag. Apparently the Italians thought Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia was hiding at the mission.

Popolo d’Italia, Benito Mussolini’s newspaper, made known that now flying with the Italian Air Force in Africa were two officers “whose illustrious name dominates the world scene.” These illustrious officers could only be tough Captain Bruno Mussolini, 22, and tough Lieut. Vittorio Mussolini, 24.

The British in the Middle East took all this Italian excitement calmly enough. At Ismailia their Commander in Chief, General Sir Archibald Percival Wavell, presented colors to a detachment from surrendered Syria—French soldiers dressed in British uniforms. He and they welcomed news that the Frenchmen of French Equatorial Africa, France’s big blob of territory south of Libya, had elected to fight on with Britain, that there were strong stirrings in French West Africa to join them (see p. 28). Australian anti-aircraftmen arrived and set up their guns in Cairo —a sure sign that Egypt expected an Italian attack soon, since Australians were not wanted in Egypt after their too hearty conduct there in the last war. Other Australians, in mechanized units, saw their first action of this war when they made a border raid near Italian-held Kassala, in the Sudan. This raid was a sign the rains were ending.

British warships from Alexandria took another point-blank crack at Marshal Graziani’s expeditionary base at Bardia. During the week, the Italians claimed extension of their drive into Kenya Colony to include Fort Polignac on Lake Rudolf in the north and Buna, a British air base 60 miles south of Moyale, one of the preliminary keys to the capture of Nairobi. The British retorted with a satisfying raid by the South African Air Force, which swooped on Mogadiscio, main port of Italian Somaliland, and blasted “hundreds” of military trucks assembled there for the Kenya push.