The Ground Rumbles

The great military volcano of the Mediterranean got ready to erupt. From Port Said to Gibraltar, steam burst from a hundred vents, and the pent-up force of military, naval and air might rumbled like subterranean lava flows.

This time the heat of the explosion would be felt around the world. This time both sides were determined that the fight would end in no stalemate. The stake of the battle would be the continent of Africa, and not only Africa but the United Nations' supply lines to the Near and Far East. A defeat in the Mediterranean could well turn out as disastrous as the loss of China or India, or a rout on the Russian front.

In the eastern Mediterranean, the German eyed Cyprus, hoped to make it another Crete, a steppingstone down the Levant to Suez. To the north in Bulgaria, General Wilhelm Student, No. 1 Nazi parachutist, whipped new men into shape, ran a vast training program for glider pilots, reconditioned ground officers to lead air infantry. Perhaps they were being trained for an invasion of Britain, but a better bet was that they were headed for the Mediterranean.

On Malta, German airmen operating from Italy stepped up their raids until they were almost continuous. The banging they gave the stout little island could no longer be explained as a show to establish a point of pride. The Axis was pocketing too many losses for that--in April a total of 137 aircraft, by British count. Malta went on taking it and fighting back, proudly showed a statue of Victoria, respectable, white and undamaged in the ragged mess of Valetta's disheveled ruins.

Already Germany had destroyed Malta's value as a main operating base for the British Fleet. It had worn down the island to the point where, by British accounts, bomber raids from Malta into Italy had come to an end. All that was left was the island, and the Axis wanted that, too.

Meanwhile from southern Italian ports the Axis sent convoys heavily reinforcing Field Marshal Rommel's Panzers in northern Africa. There was a palpable suggestion that, despite the desert's dust and heat, Rommel would strike soon from his bases where the great headland swings out to the sea on the Gulf of Sidra. The suggestion was not lost on the British. Their pilots bombed the German base at Bengasi daily; ranging through the desert storms over the German positions, they fought daily dogfights over waterless wastes.

Farther west, where the bewildered Vichyfrench still clung to the ghostly pretense of control, the ground rumbled too. Two British planes swept over Algeria, were shot down by French craft. (Two more fell before French attack down the west African coast below Dakar.) Through that defeat-darkened land German technicians, military men and tourists prowled.

In the Mediterranean itself the British Mediterranean Fleet, headed by its new commander Rear Admiral Sir Henry Harwood, dashing, eupeptic hero of the Graf Spec fight, maintained its equivocal control--unable to venture too far for fear of Axis air attack but still superior to any opposition the Italian Navy offered. Some day, any day, the first fissure of the volcano might burst and the molten lava begin to flow.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.