World War: Turtle in the Desert

No wanton wench was Cleopatra but a politician whose love of Egypt was greater than the love she bartered with lonely Roman warriors. How long she and Mark Antony lingered in Paraetonium (now Mersa Matruh) history has forgotten. The city crackled in the sun, crumbled into decay, remained virtually forgotten some 2,000 years until last week another Roman warrior sought to enter its now squalid streets. He was Marshal Rodolfo Graziani.

Graziani, by week's end, had pushed the vanguard of his 260,000 desert troops 50 miles along the coast of northwestern Egypt to Sidi Barráni. There he stopped, or was stopped. Ahead of him, along a salt-scarred road—a three-hour run in a fast tank—lay Mersa Matruh, first major objective in Italy's drive to conquer Egypt, a prize the Fascist press at home could shout through the streets as noisily as the populace once roared at slaves in clanking chains. But Graziani waited.

Well he knew that the British had prepared a reception for his troops as hot as the man-killing sun which danced off his pith helmet. Not without a fight would the British relinquish their airport, their desert training post and railhead of their vital line curling back 165 miles along the coast of Africa's eastern horn to Alexandria. Middle East Commander Lieut. General Sir Archibald Percival Wavell was handicapped by having far fewer troops than Graziani. Even so, they were not spear-hurling Ethiopians nor rock-rolling Albanians but a hotchpotch of crack British units, Punjabis and South African volunteers, tough New Zealanders and wild Australians. Against them Graziani appeared to be committed to a frontal assault, while exposing his lengthening columns to attack from desert tanks on his right flank, the guns of the British Mediterranean Fleet on the left, mine traps below ground, planes overhead. "The tortoise has stuck his head out of the shell at last," gleefully confided one British officer. But not yet was desert-wise Graziani a tortoise floundering in the shifting sands. He waited, strengthened his strung-out garrisons, brought up more water, dug new wells to replace those salted by the British in retiring. His object was to prepare Sidi Barráni as a base for his next thrust forward. As he did so, the British cracked at his vulnerable line of communication.