Steppingstones

No cement invasion barges had been invented when Crusader Richard Coeur de Lion captured the island of Cyprus in the Twelfth Century. The Knights of St. John had no guns nor explosives when they built a castled city on the Isle of Rhodes. Airplanes were undreamed-of when they buried their loot in the caverns on the island of Malta. But then as now, these islands were steppingstones toward the treasures of Egypt and the Holy land. Men's weapons have changed but the routes of conquest remain.

Through offshore waters where Phoenicians, Romans and other ancient Mediterranean conquerors sailed long before the Crusaders, ships of the British Navy slid silently last week, close to the island of Rhodes. They came north from the Nile, threaded through mine fields, swung into firing position four miles from their objective. Overhead British bombers, roaring on to blast two Axis airdromes, dropped flares over the city of Rhodes which lit it brilliantly. Their target clear, the guns of the fleet in 20 minutes flung 20 tons of shells at motor-torpedo-boat bases, docks and factories. Startled Italian defenders took ten minutes to man their anti-aircraft guns and shore batteries, were still firing into the sky (thinking they were being bombed) when the attacking ships retired. Not a plane was lost, not a rating injured, the British reported, in an action with a dual purpose: 1) to cripple Axis bases from which attacks can be launched on British convoys; 2) to smash one spearhead of a momentarily expected Axis thrust toward Suez and the oil fields of the Caucasus and Iraq (see p. 26).

Untested. To reach these modern treasures, without warring on Turkey, the Axis must strike back from Rhodes and other Dodecanese islands and either conquer Cyprus or by-pass it. In a by-pass the normally confused Italian navy would be wide open to flank attacks. To conquer Cyprus, the Axis planes would be farther away (200 miles) from land bases than in last year's attack on Crete. Even if British fighter planes were chased off Cyprus bases, there were other fields only 66 miles away on the Syrian mainland.

Parachutists landing on Cyprus' two mountain ranges, or on the "Mesaoria" between them, would be met by 350,000 Greek-speaking Cypriots and Turks, all loyal to Britain. Defenses long neglected in pre-war days have been rushed to completion; they even utilize 14-foot walls built by the Crusaders. An attack might cost thousands more lives than Crete. But the plunder would be greater.

With Cyprus taken, the oil-hungry Axis would be almost at the mouth of the Haifa and Tripoli oil pipelines, within easy striking range of Allied land forces, spread thin along the northern rim of Africa. Only Cyprus stood in the way of such an eastern pincers movement.

Well Tested. To defend the Middle East by attacking first, the British had raided Rhodes. At week's end they followed up with bomber attacks on Crete and the German submarine base at Eleusis near Athens. At the same time the British launched land and air attacks along the western route to Egypt. They shelled the Martuela airdrome in Libya while over the bomb-pocked British island base of Malta, R.A.F. fighters and anti-aircraft guns downed twelve German bombers and two Messerschmitt fighters in 24 hours. A report from London that Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, who directed the devastation of Warsaw and Coventry, was now in Sicily hinted ominously that dawn-to-dusk raids were a prelude to sea-borne invasion.

As a new week began, British submarines claimed to have sunk eleven Axis ships attempting to by-pass Malta with reinforcements for Libya. The Italian Navy claimed that a major sea battle was raging, with a Malta-bound convoy as the prize.

If the Axis offensive was getting under way, Malta on the western flank and Cyprus on the east were shields to ward off the first blows. Malta's metal was well tested. So far in World War II, Malta has had nearly 2,000 air raids and is still unconquered. Attacks last week sometimes lasted from dawn to dark, but the raid-toughened Maltese, using the caverns which honeycomb the island as air-raid shelters, carried on much as usual. Even the goats were so learned in raids that they flounced into ditches when the sirens wailed.

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