Italian Forces

Electric Whiskers

Australian War Memorial

Three captured Italian generals and their staff, after the fall of Bardia, Libya, were brought from the Western Desert by air, an here they arriving at Cairo Airport, February 1941. The general on the center of the photo is the Lieutenant General Annibale Bergonzoli nicknamed "Electric Whiskers", commander of XXIII Corpo d’Armata of Italian Tenth Army. During the offensive into Egypt on 1940 of Marshal Rodolfo Graziani, was the commander of the defenses of Bardia. After the fall of city, 5 January 1941, further to Operation Compass, the British Offensive, at the end of 1940, led by General Richard O'Connor, which forced the Italians to retreat into Cyrenaica, Bergonzoli reached Tobruk but on February 7, 1941, surrendered to Australian forces. Victor Sierra