Wednesday, August 29, 1923 Scaling Heights.

Teton's, 1902.

The South Teton was scaled for the first time. The climbers were Albert R. Ellingwood and Eleanor Davis. That same day, Ellingwood became the first person to climb the 12,809 feet (3,904 m) high Middle Teton.

Granite Peak, in Montana, was scaled for the first time.  The climbers were Elers Koch, James C. Whitham, and R.T. Ferguson, 

Italy, taking a page out of the Austro-Hungarian Empire's book, delivered a seven point ultimatum to Greece, in response to the assassination in an ambush of an Italian general on a League of Nations', not an Italian, mission from the day prior.

It demanded:

• An official apology at the Italian legation in Athens, even though guilt was not established.
• A solemn funeral in the Catholic cathedral in Athens in the presence of the whole of the Greek government, quite a demand for anti-religious Mussolini to an Orthodox republic.
• Military honors for the bodies of the victims, who were Italian, and who deserved an Italian funeral, not a Greek one.
• Full honors by the Greek fleet to the Italian fleet which would be sent to Piraeus, as if that had anything to do with his at all.
• Capital punishment for the guilty, who were not known in the first place.
• An indemnity of 50 million lire within five days.

A reply was demanded within 24 hours. Surprisingly, Greece replied on August 30, 1923, accepting four of the demands which with modifications as follows:

• The Piraeus commandant would express the Greek Government's sorrow to the Italian Minister.
• A memorial service would be held in the presence of members of the government,
• A detachment of the guard would salute the Italian flag at the Italian legation
• The Greek military would render honors to the remains of the victims when they were transferred to an Italian warship.

The conditional acceptance was beyond reasonable.

Monday, August 27, 1923. Irish Free State's first election.

The Irish Free State held its first election.  The Cumann na nGaedheal party, led by Prime Minister W. T. Cosgrave, won 63 seats and the Irish Republicans led by Éamon de Valera received 44.   That left Cosgrave short of the 77 seats he needed for a majority, but the Republicans, exercising the goofball strategy of abstentionism, refused to take their seats, and the Irish Farmers Party joined Cosgrave in a coalition.

The Farmers Party was an agrarian party that faded in the 20s, ceasing to exist in 1932.

Italian General Enrico Tellini, on a League of Nation's mission to inspect the border between Greece and Albania, was ambushed and killed.  The Italians blamed the Greeks which would soon result in a crisis, although they identity of the killers was never established. 

Miss Washington, D.C. Lorraine Bunch was photographed.

A train derailed at Suman, Indiana.

Saturday, August 25, 1923. Involuntary population exchanges.

The Greek government ratified the Convention Concerning the Exchange of Greek and Turkish Populations, following the Turkish ratification two days prior.

1.5 million Orthodox Christians from Turkey were accordingly involuntarily sent to Greece and 500,000 Greek Muslims involuntarily sent to Turkey.

Violence broke out in Carnegie Pennsylvania when 10,000 Ku Klux Klansman held a rally on a nearby hill and moved towards the heavily Catholic town.  Town residents threw rocks and ultimately a Klansman was shot dead.

Sometimes missed, the Klan was not only racist, but nativist, and anti-Catholic.

Memories of Klan violence still echo in Carnegie today

Bob Podurgiel: When the Klan came to Carnegie

Germany put workers on the gold basis rate in an attempt to stem inflation.

The government was trying to stave off coal labor problems again.

And a lecturer declared Woodrow Wilson's idealism too advanced for the world.

Wednesday, August 18, 1943. Air Space.

President Roosevelt, via Executive Order, revoked deferments for striking defense plant workers.

The RAF hit Peenemünde with three waves of bombers in Operation Hydra.  Damage was so extensive that Luftwaffe General Jeschonnek, charged with defense of the Reich's airspace and well ware of his failings in that regard, and further having an inwardly timid personalty masked by a harden affectation, killed himself the following day, leaving a note that stated; „Mit dem Reichsmarschall kann ich nicht mehr zusammenarbeiten. Es lebe der Führer!“ ("I can no longer work together with the Reichsmarschall. Long live the Führer!").  He left a further note excluding Ulrich Dieseing and Bernd von Brauchitsche from his funeral.  A memorandum he left called upon Hitler to change leadership in the Luftwaffe, but was confiscated by Göring.

Ultimately, in some way, Jeschonnek was a victim of his personality, knowing internally that the air war was lost, but lacking the will to do something about it.

Sarah Sundin noted Jeschonnek's fate on her blog, and also noted the following:

Today in World War II History—August 18, 1943: Army Air Force barrage balloon battalions are inactivated in the US. Betty Smith’s bestselling novel A Tree Grows in Brooklyn is published.

The U.S. Navy bombarded Palmi and Gioai Taura in Italy.

The Allies prevailed in the Battle of Mount Tambu.

46,000 mostly Jewish Greeks arrived at Auschwitz.

Tuesday, July 24, 1923. Natrona County Floods. The end of World War One?

 Flooding was ravaging Natrona County, Wyoming.

The Treaty of Lausanne was signed in Switzerland.  It was the last treaty relating to World War One.

The Hague Academy of International Law was inaugurated.

Thursday, July 23, 1923. No gas for anything.

The early stages of the Battle of Belgorod began on the Eastern Front when the Wehrmacht's XI Army Corps returned to their prior fortified positions on both sides of the city

Brazil, having banned the use of gasoline powered automobiles the prior year, now did the same for motorcycles in order to conserve fuel.

Sarah Sundin, on her blog, notes:

Today in World War II History—July 23, 1943: First US naval air squadron to operate in Britain arrives for antisubmarine duty—squadron VP-63 with PBY Catalinas, nicknamed the “Mad Cats."

She also notes that Rommel assumed command of Army Group E in Greece to defend that territory from an anticipated Allied invasion.

Thursday, July 22, 1943. Palermo falls to the Seventh Army. Greeks riot over Macedonia, US landings at Munda Point.

Patton's Seventh Army entered Palermo to an enormous celebration by the residents of the ancient city.  Two captured Italian generals, in turn, claimed to be happy about the event because "the Sicilians were not human beings but animals" ("i Siciliani non erano esseri umani ma animali").

Seventh Army staff aboard SS Monrovia, en route to Sicily, June/July 1943.

The Italian fascist government had held anti-Sicilian views due to Sicily's long peculiar history.  

The island has been inhabited since ancient times and was a destination for Italic and Phoenician colonists as far back as 1200 BC, who displaced the already existing Sicilian population.  Greek colonization commenced around 750 BC.  In antiquity, it was contested by the Greeks and Carthaginians, both of whom conquered it at different times.  The Romans conquered it and displaced the Carthaginians and declared that the island should be latinized, although its culture remained, at the time, Greek.  With the fall of the Roman Empire, it fell to invading Germanic tribes, with the Vandals taking Palermo in 440.  The Byzantine Empire then retook it, as the Eastern Roman Empire, and ruled it from the 550s to the 960s, during which time the Arabs began to attempt to take it.  From the 820s through the 960s, it slowly fell to Muslim invaders.

The Normans arrived starting in 1038, around thirty years prior to their invasion of England, and began to take it from the Arabs.  They formed a Norman kingdom that lasted until 1198, becoming part of the typical drama of European kingdoms at the time.  The Normans imported European settlers to the island, which went from being 1/3d Greek speaking and 2/3s Arabic speaking to being latinized once again.  It went back and forth to varying European households until 1860, when the Italians conquered it.  It became part of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861.

During the fascist period the island was subject to unwelcome attention in part because Italians have never really regarded Sicilians as Italians, given their multi-ethnic heritage, and part because the strong local character of the island was unwelcome. Also, unwelcome was the fairly strong local Communist Party and the Sicilian Mafia. The fascist nearly crushed the Mafia during their period in power.

A general strike was called in Athens over Bulgarian intentions to annex Macedonia, which resulted in a massive protest in the city over the same thing.

The protests were successful in that they postponed the Bulgarian plans to the point that they were never carried out.

The SS executed all of the remaining 2,500 inmates of the Tarnopol concentration camp.

US infantry during the battle.

The Battle of Munda Point began on New Georgia.  The object was the points' airfield, in what would become a hard fought campaign.

The U.S. Navy raided Kiska.

Monday, June 21, 1943. Spreading the Holocaust in the Baltic

Douglas SBD "Dauntless" dive bomber balanced on nose after crash landing on carrier flight deck, June 21, 1943.

Head of the SS Heinrich Himmler ordered that all remaining Jews in the Baltic States be transferred to slave labor camps.

Sarah Sundin notes, on her blog:

Today in World War II History—June 21, 1943: US Marines land unopposed at Segi Point, New Georgia, in the Solomon Islands. Detroit race riot begins between whites and Blacks.

The NFL approved the temporary Merger of the Eagles and the Steelers, something we reported on the other day.  The declined the proposal to merge the Bears and the Cardinals.

Occupied Greece saw action as the SOE destroyed a railway bridge over the Asopos and the Greek Liberation Army conducted an ambush in the Battle of Sarantaporos.

The US Supreme Court rules in Stack v. Boyle that a foreign born citizen could not have that citizenship revoked for joining the Communist Party.

Harvard rejected a proposal to admit women to its medical school.

Wednesday, June 9, 1943. George H. W. Bush takes flight.

Payroll taxes were passed by Congress for the second time in U.S. history, the first time having been in 1913.  Automatic withholding was a feature of the tax.

Sarah Sundin, on her blog, notes:

Today in World War II History—June 9, 1943: Future president George H.W. Bush is commissioned as an ensign in the US Naval Reserves, age 18; he’ll become the youngest US naval aviator in history.

She also noted that the Navy declared Los Angeles off limits, helping to bring the Zoot Suit Riots to an end. 

The Battle of Porta ended with the Italian Army burning down a series of Greek villages.

Tuesday, June 8, 1943. The explosion of the Mutsu.

The ammunition magazine of the Mutsu exploded during very hot weather while the ship was anchored at Hashirajima.  The explosion killed 1,222 people, only one of whom was not a crew member of the ship.

The ship had been built in 1918 and had largely spent the war as a training ship.  The Japanese Navy investigated the explosion and concluded, while physical examination was still ongoing, that the ship had been sabotaged by a disgruntled seaman.  In reality, its aft magazine may have exploded due to environmental conditions.

The Battle of Porta commenced in central Greece between the Italian Army and the Greek People's Liberation Army.  It was the first time the latter fought a conventional battle.

Sarah Sundin notes on her blog:

Today in World War II History—June 8, 1943: US begins the “Victory Home” campaign to encourage conservation, scrap collection, war bond purchases, and other patriotic wartime activities.

William J. Calley, who would be convicted for his role in the My Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War was born on this day.  He remains alive at age 79.

 Calley would only serve three years under house arrest for the crime.

Saturday, May 26, 1923. The Twenty Four Hours of Le Mans

The first Le Mans automobile race took place.

The French executed some Germans who were committing acts of sabotage and the like against their occupation of the Ruhr.

One of the terrorist was one Albert Leo Schlageter, a former German officer of the Great War and a Freikorps officer who had engaged in acts of sabotage against the French.  He was not a "Red" and would go on to obtain mythic status in the German far right, including the early Nazis, who in fact murdered his betrayer.  The killers of that individual were one Rudolf Höss and Martin Bormann, who would later go on to roles in the Third Reich.  They were first captured and sentenced for their role in the murder.  

Bormann is well known, but Höss less so.  He was Auschwitz's longest commanding officer and was executed in 1947.  Facing execution, he came to see his actions as gravely immoral and wrote this out to his wife prior to his execution:

My conscience compels me to make the following declaration. In the solitude of my prison cell, I have come to the bitter recognition that I have sinned gravely against humanity. As Commandant of Auschwitz, I was responsible for carrying out part of the cruel plans of the 'Third Reich' for human destruction. In so doing I have inflicted terrible wounds on humanity. I caused unspeakable suffering for the Polish people in particular. I am to pay for this with my life. May the Lord God forgive one day what I have done. I ask the Polish people for forgiveness. In Polish prisons I experienced for the first time what human kindness is. Despite all that has happened I have experienced humane treatment which I could never have expected, and which has deeply shamed me. May the facts which are now coming out about the horrible crimes against humanity make the repetition of such cruel acts impossible for all time.

On this same day, a Communist lead strike in the Ruhr expanded.

The British made the Emirate of Transjordan autonomous, but not independent of British oversight. It would achieve full independence in 1946.

Turkey waived reparations claims against Greece at Lausanne in exchange for the Thracian territory.

Thursday, March 4, 1943. Murders of Greek Jews and uprising of Greek partisans.

Jews in Bulgarian occupied Greece, annexed by Bulgaria as Belomorie, were gathered and deported to Treblinka.

This provides another example of how the Holocaust was expanding post German defeat at Stalingrad.

In northern Greece, the Battle of Fardykambos between Greek partisans of the National Liberation Front, and local residents, and the Italian Army commenced.  It would be a partisan success.

The Afrika Korps concluded Operation Ochsenkopf in Tunisia in failure.

Mrs. Minver won the Academy Awards for best picture.  Her acceptance speech remains the longest in Academy history at six minutes.

The drama was the first movie to win an Academy Award which was set during World War Two.

Wednesday, February 21, 1923. Time travel.

Greece made its final use of the Julian calendar, thereby going from today, which was February 15 on the Julian, to March 1 the following day, reflecting the switch to the Gregorian calendar.

President Harding signed the Smoot-Burton Act compromising the British war debt somewhat.

France deported the policemen in Bouchum and Herne away from their cities.

Tuesday, February 16, 1943. Mildred Harnack executed. Theresienstadt temporairly spared. Domenikon not spared. Norwegian paratroopers drop. Stalin asks for a "second front".

Himmler ordered a cessation of deportations of elderly Jews from the Theresienstadt ghetto, resulting in a complete sessaion of deportations of all Jews from there for six months.  Oddly, the ghetto had been designated as a location where elderly Jews could live out tehir lives, albeit not comfortably, resulting in the order, but a peson has to wonder to what extent the order simply wasn't practical, given the massive strain hte war had put on the German railways system, which was being compounded by German deportations.

Italian soldiers commenced reprisal murders of Greek civilians at Domenikon which would result in 175 Greek men being killed.

Norwegian paratroopers were dropped by the British at Skrykenvann in preparation for a raid on the hydro plant at Vemork, targeted at heavy water production.

East German stamp in honor of the Harnacs.

Mildred Harnack, née Fish, a 41-year-old Milwaukee, Wisconsin native, was executed by guillotine at Germany's Plötzensee Prison on orders of Adolph Hitler.  

Harnack was an academic who married Arvid Harnack, a German academic. The couple moved to Arvid's native land, and in the 1930s the couple, if not outright Communists, were at least serious fellow travelers, something not that unusual for academics at the time.  While this was the case, they nonetheless were members of the American Church in Berlin, a Protestant church which Americans attended prior to the war.

The Harnacks were members of the Red Orchestra, which lead to her arrest and execution.  

The story of her death is largely unknown in the US and was in fact suppressed by the US government due to their Communist sympathies.   The U.S. Army's Counterintelligence Corps (CIC) concluded her execution "justified", which legally it likely was, given that the sentence for treason was death everywhere at the time. That doesn't make her effort any less noble, of course.

Josepah Stalin, who was fighting a one front, if gigantic, war wrote to Franklin Roosevelt, reiterating the need for a "second front".  The United States was, of course already engaged in a second front in North Africa, a third front in the Pacific, and a basically a fourth front on the Atlantic, none of which involved the Soviets.

The Western Allies, throughout the war, loyally plade this sharade with Stalin, who was, of course, a former German ally, none of which is to belittle the giant Soviet war effort, but which is also not to ignore that the effort was being heavily supplied by the Western Allies.  Soviet propoganda, particularly in the USSR itslef, was so effective on thsi score, hoewver, that unfortunately modern Russians still believe it.

Former slave George Washington Buckner, and later U.S. Minister to Liberia (1913 to 1915) died in Indiana at age 87.  He was also a physician.

Thursday, February 15, 1923. Forbes quits from long distance, Veterans gather, Greece compounds the injustice.

Gathering at USS Maine memorial on the 25th anniversary of its sinking.

Charles R. Forbes, the Director of the U.S. Veteran's Bureau, resigned the position from his self-appointed refuge of Europe, following suspicions that he had been selling surplus supplies at huge discounts to contractors for kickbacks.  His confrontation with Harding on the matter had resulted in a physical altercation, with Forbes reportedly begging Harding to be allowed to depart for Europe prior to resigning.

The Scottish born Forbes had lived a colorful life, having been a Marine Corps musician at age 16, an engineer, a soldier in the Army charged with desertion and ultimately discharged as a Sergeant First Class after only eight years of service, employed in the construction field, and a Lieutenant Colonel in World War One.

He'd be prosecuted for conspiracy to defraud the Federal Government and end up serving 20 months in prison.  He'd live until 1949, dying at age 74.

Greece expropriate additional dwellings from the Albanian Cham Muslims in order to free up dwelling space for expelled Greeks from Turkey, thereby compounding the injustice.

Albanians had nothing to do with Greece's situation and the event signals out how Greece, in some ways, set the table for the disaster it was experiencing.  Turkey was being barbarous to the Anatolian Greeks, but the Greeks had not been kind to the Anatolian Muslims.

And this also demonstrates how something that began in World War One with good intention, independent nation states comprised of free peoples, was morphing into expelling minorities from lands they'd occupied for eons.

Margaret Lindsey Williams, working on her portrait of President Harding.

Tuesday, January 30, 1923. Forced Relocation of Greeks and Turks

The treaty between Greece and Turkey which resulted in the forcible relocation more than 1.6 million people based on ethnicity and religion, 1,221,489 Turkish-born Greek Orthodox Christians and 400,000 Greek residents of Istanbul and Muslim Turks on the Greek side of the divided area of Thrace, were exempt, although many people relocated anyway.

The treaty was the first of the massive ethnic and religion based movements of peoples that would become a feature of the mid 20th Century, and which were a perversion of one of Wilson's Fourteen Points.  By the end of, and following, World War Two this would be conducted on a massive scale, particularly in Eastern Europe.

All of the imperial powers that had gone into World War One were multiethnic, at least to some degree.  The Germans, for example, had a large Polish population that was not only in what we'd regard as Poland, but also in areas which had a mixed Polish/German, population, and populations of ethnic Germans were present in Czechoslovakia, Poland, Romania, the USSR,and elsewhere.  In what became Poland after World War One, there remained populations of Ukrainians and other peoples, and Ukraine also included populations of Poles.  Ukrainians extended out into what was then and now regarded as Russia.  Finns remained in areas that Russia retained.  And what was left to Turkey of the Ottoman Empire included not only Turks, but Armenians, Greeks and Kurds.  The concept that all nations had to be nation states, a perversion of nations getting states as envisioned by Wilson, was a direct cause of World War Two. 

Exiled Kaiser Wilhelm II visited with monarchist Germans in Nijmegen about a possible return to the German throne, but decided the time was not ripe.  It never would be.

Department of Agriculture Poultry Club.

Thursday, January 11, 1923. The French and Belgians Occupy the Ruhr

In one of the most condemned moves of 20th Century history, French and Belgium troops (the Belgians are often forgotten as having a role in this) started their occupation of the Ruhr by crossing into Essen into 0445.

French troops in Dortmund.

100,000 French soldiers were in the Ruhr by the end of the week.

Forgotten in this is that the French were a far more stable political entity at the time than the Germans, and the Germans had breached the Versailles Treaty.  If the French had shown similar backbone in 1936, they would have stopped Hitler cold, caused him to lose the chancellorship, and he'd have been luck to have not ended up in the ground that year.

The Germans get a lot of sympathy here they really don't deserve.

Hitler did use the occasion to attack, in a speech, the German republican government.

Secy. of Labor Davis delivering the opening address at first meeting of the Nat'l Industrial Women's Conference, Jan. 11, 1923, at the Nat'l Museum.

Greek King Constantine 1 died in Italy in exile at age 54.  He reigned, and abdicated, twice, losing his second regnum due to the war with Turkey.

Very oddly, his successor, two intervening kings in between, Constantine II died yesterday at age 82 in Athens.  He was Greek's last king.

Wednesday January 10, 1923. The Klaipėda Revolt.

 Delegates to the Near East Conference in Lausanne, Switzerland, voted to accept a Turkish proposal to "exchange" the Greek and Turkish populations of the two countries.

This would result in the expulsion of 600,000 Greeks from Anatolia, where they had been since ancient times, and in which the Turks were originally an invader, for 450,000 Turks in Greece.  An exception was made for 200,000 Greeks in Constantinople, a city identified with the Greeks since ancient times, and 300,000 in Western Thrace.

Irrespective of the inequities, and even barbarism, of the Greek advances in Anatolia following World War One, the result was inhumane and effectively completed a process that the Ottoman invasion had started centuries ago.  Greek overreaching following World War One was responsible for a lot of what occurred, but it's a tragedy by any measure.

Only about 2,500 Greeks remain in Turkey today.

The French staged near Essen in preparation for intervening in the Ruhr.

Participants in the revolt.

Lithuanians rebelled in the Klaipėda Revolt in Memelland.  Lithuanian troops intervened in support of the insurrection.  The goal of the revolt was to join Memelland to Lithuania, and it met with little resistance from German troops, stationed on what had been German territory, and French occupation forces.

Both the French and the Germans had other things to worry about on this day other than Memelland.

The population of the region was about 45% German. The remaining population was Memellandish and Lithuanian.  Having said this, the ethnic composition of Memelland was complex in every fashion, with Memmelandish being a dialect of German, and the Lithuanian population of the region being predominantly Lutheran, whereas in Lithuania the vast majority of the population was Roman Catholic, a trait they shared with the Poles.  It was a mixed border region, in other words, but the border had been stable since 1441.

President Harding ordered U.S. troops withdrawn from Germany.

From Reddit's 100 Years Ago Today.

This was, of course, because it appeared that France was about to enter the Ruhr, which in fact it was.

From Reddit's 100 Years Ago Today.

Sultan Said bin Taimur of Oman was compelled to sign an agreement with the United Kingdom to provide for pre-approval by the British High Commissioner in India of any contracts between oil exploration companies and Oman.

The Sultan Said was born in 1910 and had attended Mayo College at Ajmer in Rajputana, India.  Following that it was suggested that his education be furthered in Beirut, but it was not as his father feared he'd be influenced by Christianity.  He remained in power until 1970, when he was deposed by his son.

His technical rule of the country, arranged by the British, did not happen until 1932.  He died in the United Kingdom in 1972 at the age of 62.

Monday, November 27, 1922. Safety in D.C., Change of government in Greece.

Streetcar decorated with safety slogans. Washington, D.C., Nov. 27, 1922

Lt. Gen. Stylianos Gonatas became the Prime Minister of Greece following the bloody shakeup in the prior Greek government.

Wednesday, November 25, 1942. Operation Mars commences

Having just concluded Operation Uranus around Stalingrad, the Red Army launched Operation Mars near the Rzhev salient outside of Moscow.

Operation Mars remains a controversial offensive, as the Soviets later claimed it was a diversion designed to tie down German forces in the north so that they could not be redeployed to the south.  This view has been taken by famed student of the Red Army, Anthony Beever.  Noted historian David Glanz, however, disagrees, and I frankly feel that Glanz has the better side of the argument.

It should be noted that the offensive was supposedly the subject of a radio false information campaign by the Soviets, something they were very good at, designed to draw attention to it prior to its commencement.  The overall problem is that, as a diversion, if it was one, it was a big one which wasn't skillfully executed, which would be odd as its success, diversion or not, should have been something sought by the Soviets.

The Soviet offensive would ultimately fail, which may provide the reason for its having been claimed as a diversion.  If it was a diversion, it was a massive one, involving over 700,000 troops.  Notably, in Mars the Red Army was encountering German troops, who fought stubbornly from its onset, rather than the forces of Germany's Eastern Front allies.  Additionally, the offensive started after Uranus had concluded, whereas if it were a diversion it would seem more likely that it would have commenced simultaneously.

As with Stalingrad, the German forces were subject to a Hitler no retreat order.  Hitler had issued a similar order the prior winter, which had proven instrumental in stabilizing the front.  The strategic situation had changed since then, however, and while it worked in this instance, it was costly.  The Germans took 40,000 casualties, small compared to the outsized 335,000 casualties the Red Army took, but the losses would not be made up by the German 9th Army by the following spring and therefore made it less effective in resumed offensive operations that year.

The Washington Post ran an article with the headline:

Two Million Jews Slain

This was the written report on the live announcement by Rabbi Stephen Wise announcement of the prior day.  It did not make the front page.

The Luftwaffe began to fly supply missions into Stalingrad.

At Meijez el Bab British forces made a disastrous attack on the town, which was defended by German paratroopers of the Luftwaffe's 5th Fallschirmjager Regiment.   The unit had been in North Africa since the summer, at which point it became part of the Afrika Korps.  It's deployment to Tunisia had been by plane, but they had not made a combat drop.

Medjez al Bab is an ancient city and was the site of a prior battle, the Battle of Bagradas River in 536 at which Eastern Roman Empire forces under Belisarius fought rebel forces under Stotzas.

British SOE operatives and Greek resistance fighters raided the Gorgopotamos viaduct in Operation Harling.