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Re: Terrain Challenge #79 (Score: 1) by Lestayo on Sun May 25, 2014 3:56 am (User Info | Send a Message)
Jackpot!!!!
The Battle of Keren was fought as part of the East African Campaign during the Second World War. The battle was fought from 5 February to 1 April 1941 between a mixed Italian army of regular and colonial troops and the attacking British, Commonwealth, and Free French forces. The town of Keren, located in the Italian colony of Eritrea, was of strategic importance to both the Italian and the British-led forces in 1941. The road and railway routes through Keren were the key to access the city of Asmara (colonial capital of Eritrea) and the Red Sea port of Massawa, both of which surrendered to Allied forces in the aftermath of the battle.
Compton Mackenzie wrote:
Keren was as hard a soldiers' battle as was ever fought, and let it be said that nowhere in the war did the Germans fight more stubbornly than those [Italian] Savoia battalions, Alpini, Bersaglieri and Grenadiers. In the [first] five days' fight the Italians suffered nearly 5,000 casualties – 1,135 of them killed. [Lorenzini],[23] the gallant young Italian general, had his head blown off by one of the British guns. He had been a great leader of Eritrean troops.[19]
The unfortunate licence of wartime propaganda allowed the British Press to represent the Italians almost as comic warriors; but except for the German parachute division in Italy and the Japanese in Burma no enemy with whom the British and Indian troops were matched put up a finer fight than those Savoia battalions at Keren. Moreover, the Colonial troops, until they cracked at the very end, fought with valour and resolution, and their staunchness was a testimony to the excellence of the Italian administration and military training in Eritrea
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