"Soon the Guns..."

Up from the south the Liberators flew to drop their calling cards at the Balkan door to middle Europe. They surprised Sedes airdrome, the big Luftwaffe base near Salonika, struck a savage blow and got away without loss. Four days later their wings swept again over Grecian soil, their bombs plastered Nazi airfields near Athens.

This could be the beginning of the aerial softening-up that would prelude any Allied offensive in the Eastern Mediterranean. It was accompanied by a barrage of rumors and reports from Berlin and London.

The Axis radio reported:

> That the famed British Eighth Army had moved from Tunisia to Syria, to take station beside the British Ninth and Tenth Armies and "fresh" American troops.

> That the British had declared a state of siege in Syria.

> That the British had requisitioned all private cars in Syria, as they had already done in Iraq and Persia.

> That Nazi Balkan defenses were primed and ready.

> That "soon the guns in the [eastern] Mediterranean will start firing."

All these Axis statements jibed with reports in the British press, which featured dispatches from correspondents stationed in Turkey and Egypt.

> The News Chronicle's reliable Derek Patmore wrote from Istanbul that the Lebanese capital and chief port, Beirut, had begun to rival Cairo as an Allied base. "The huge concentrations of United Nations troops in Syria and Lebanon seem to confirm the general feeling that attacks on the Greek Islands and the Dodecanese will take place in the near future." Besides "extremely important units of British and Imperial troops," there was in this theater a Greek army "fully equipped with the latest weapons and totaling 30,000 men. Supplies are pouring in from Egypt. It can now be revealed that General Montgomery recently paid a visit to Syria and inspected various bases."

> The Economist analyzed Nazi plans. "The Germans clearly expect an onslaught from the southeast. For months now defense workers have been . . . fortifying the Greek coasts and some of the islands. ... In Bulgaria the mountain passes have recently been fortified. . . . [The Nazi] aim in the Balkans must be to defend Rumania for its oil and to prevent a break-through into the great plain of Central Europe. . . . The Germans can hope that the Allies, after exhausting themselves in expensive attacks on the outposts, would have to face a heavy counteroffensive from the air and heavily mechanized armies operating from well prepared and equipped supply bases."

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