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re: Algeria?/France? 1942 SEMI-POSTAL STAMP

Nice stamp. It marked the tenth anniversary of the battle.

Algeria: SG 319 / Scott #B66 from 1952.

Silence in the face of adversity is the father of complicity and collusion, the first cousins of conspiracy..
25 Nov 2018
12:33:49am

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re: Algeria?/France? 1942 SEMI-POSTAL STAMP

Bir Hakeim was a small deserted fort in the
Libyan Desert that was taken over by the
Free French forces in 1942. Rommel's forces
tried to outflank the Allies and trap their
forces, but this fort lay in their path.
The German and Italian attacked it for about
two weeks but the mixed units there held out
long enough for the British and Allied Army
to escape, eventually falling back to El Alamein
on the Egyptian border. In the desert war, time,
supplies and reinforcements were as important
as tanks and aircraft.
The delay forced Rommel to circle further south
and they were not prepared to assault the Alamein
Line, saving the Suez Canal area and blocking
the path to the middle east oil fields.
The battle of bir Hakeim is one of the many little
known events of WW Ii that helped change the result.