History of the Second World War (72 page)

In the early hours of March 23, when there was clearly no chance of reviving the coastal attack, Montgomery decided to recast his plan, and concentrate all his resources on the inland flank, as there was better ground for hope there that a renewed attack in greater strength might break through to El Hamma. He ordered Horrocks with the headquarters of his 10th Corps and the 1st Armoured Division, commanded by Major-General Raymond Briggs (160 tanks), to start moving inland that night and make a long circuit through the desert to reinforce the New Zealanders. At the same time the 4th Indian Division (Major-General Francis Tuker) was to side-step inland from Medenine and clear the Hallouf Pass, through the Matmata Hills, the use of which would shorten by more than a hundred miles the supply route to the mass of manoeuvre advancing on the desert flank. After clearing the pass, Tuker was to push northward along the hill-tops, past the immediate flank of the Mareth Line, thus producing an additional threat to the enemy’s flank and opening an alternative line of thrust for exploitation if the wider manoeuvre through the ‘Plum’ gap was blocked.

The new plan was a fine conception and masterly switch. It showed Montgomery’s capacity for flexibility in varying his thrust-point, and creating fresh leverage when checked, even better than at Alamein — although, as was his habit, he subsequently tended to obscure the credit due to him for such flexibility, the hallmark of generalship, by talking as if everything had gone ‘according to plan’ from the outset. In many respects Mareth was his finest battle performance in the war, despite the troubles ensuing from his initial plan in trying to force a breakthrough on a narrow and marshy sector near the coast, and disclosing the potentialities of the desert manoeuvre without using sufficient strength to ensure its speedy fulfilment.

This premature disclosure became the chief handicap to the new plan of attack, called ‘Supercharge II’ — a name prompted by memories of the finally successful plan at Alamein. For having been alerted by the New Zealanders’ arrival near ‘Plum’ on the 20th, the Axis command was quick to deduce that the further movements in that direction which were spotted on the evening of the 23rd and again on the 24th, by observers on the hills, portended a change in Montgomery’s plan and the switching of his weight to the desert flank. Accordingly, the 15th Panzer Division was brought back near to El Hamma, in readiness to support the 21st Panzer and 164th Light, two days before the British reinforcements reached that area — only just in time for the planned launch of the attack on the afternoon of March 26.

The prospects of Supercharge IT diminished when surprise vanished, but that loss was compensated by the combination of four other factors. The primary one was that Arnim had decided, on the 24th, to withdraw Messe’s army to the Wadi Akarit position rather than risk it being trapped, and overruled Messe’s desire to cling on to the Mareth Line — so that the defenders of the hill-gap were only required to hold up the assault long enough to extricate the non-mobile divisions in the Mareth Line. The second factor was the way that the path of the assault was swept by an air ‘barrage’ — produced by successive low-level attacks, with bombs and cannon-fire, by sixteen squadrons of fighter-bombers, operating in fifteen-minute relays of two squadrons at a time. This defence-stunning adaptation of the German ‘blitz’ method was organised by Air Vice-Marshal Harry Broadhurst, commanding the Desert Air Force, and worked very effectively — although frowned on by his distant R.A.F. superiors as a breach of Air Staff doctrine. The third factor was the bold decision to press on the armoured advance during the night — a course which the Germans had often pursued with profit, but which the British had been reluctant to try. The fourth factor was a stroke of good luck — that a sandstorm blew up which cloaked the assembly of the British armour and the first stage of its advance through a hill-gap bristling with enemy anti-tank guns on both flanks.

The attack was launched at 4 p.m. on the 26th, with the sun low behind it to help in blinding the defenders. The 8th Armoured Brigade and the New Zealand infantry led the way. Then Raymond Briggs’s 1st Armoured Division passed through them about 6 p.m., penetrated five miles under cover of dust and dusk, paused at 7.30 p.m. when darkness fell, and drove forward again ‘in a solid phalanx’ just before midnight when the moon rose. By daybreak, on March 27, it was safely through the bottleneck and had arrived on the edge of El Hamma.

But here the British were checked for two days by the Germans’ anti-tank screen, and a counterattack against their flank by some thirty tanks of the 15th Panzer Division. The delay was long enough to allow the bulk of the Mareth Line garrison, even though marching on foot, to escape the threatened cut-off and withdraw to the Wadi Akarit position. About 5,000 Italians had been taken prisoner, mainly in the earlier phase of the battle, and 1,000 Germans were captured in the fighting near El Hamma — but their sacrificial effort to cover the coastal corridor of retreat enabled the bulk of the Axis forces to withdraw safely, and with little loss of equipment. A quick switch of thrust-line might have reached the coast and cut them off, but the opportunity was missed. More than a week’s pause followed before Montgomery was ready to tackle the enemy’s new position.

Meanwhile Patton renewed his attack towards the coast and the enemy’s rear, being reinforced for the purpose with the U.S. 9th and 34th Infantry Divisions. While the main thrust was to be from El Guettar towards Gabes, with the 1st and 9th Infantry Divisions opening a path for the 1st Armored, the 34th was to capture the Fondouk Pass, a hundred miles to the north, and thus open a further route into the coastal plain. But the Fondouk attack, made on March 27, was soon checked — by a thinly strung defence — and abandoned next day. The 34th Division then fell back four miles to the west to get out of range and reorganise — a withdrawal that led its opponents to draw the conclusion, in a battlefield report, that: ‘The American gives up the fight as soon as he is attacked.’

The main attack, from El Guettar, was delivered on the 28th but also suffered a check, after a small gain of ground in harder fighting. By that time Montgomery had broken through at El Hamma and reached Gabes, so Alexander directed Patton to launch his armoured column towards the coast without waiting until the infantry had cleared its path. The attempt was baulked by the enemy’s well-knit chain of anti-tank guns, and after three days of ineffectual effort the infantry were again called on to clear the way — but achieved no better success, despite Patton’s prodding. Nevertheless the threat of a breakthrough, into the enemy’s rear, had led to the 21st Panzer Division being despatched to this sector to support the 10th, and that additional distraction of the enemy’s meagre armoured reserve was of great help to Montgomery’s impending frontal assault on the Wadi Akarit position — for which he had 570 tanks and 1,470 guns.

This was strong by nature, as the flat coastal strip is barely four miles wide, and covered by the deep trough of the Wadi Akarit, while at the point where this wadi becomes shallow and narrow a range of steep-sided low hills rises from the plain and stretches to the verge of the salt-marsh belt. But the Axis decision to quit the Mareth Line had been taken so late that there had been scant time to fortify the position and extend it in depth. Worse still for the defenders, they were very short of ammunition — having used up most of their limited supply by making their stand prematurely and too far forward.

Montgomery’s first idea, as at Mareth, was to pierce the enemy’s position on a narrow sector near the coast, and then pass the armour through to exploit the penetration. The 51st (Highland) Division was to make the breach, while the 4th Indian Division under Tuker was to capture the eastern end of the hill-barrier to cover its flank. But Tuker urged that the attack frontage should be widened, and extended westward to capture the dominating heights in the centre — following the mountain warfare axiom that ‘the second highest ground is no good’. He was confident that his troops had the trained skill in both hill and night fighting to tackle such a difficult obstacle. Montgomery accepted the proposal and extended the attack frontage, employing the three infantry divisions of 30th Corps in the breaching assault. Moreover, rather than wait a further week for a moonlight period, he took the bold decision to launch it in the dark, relying on the advantage of obscurity to outweigh the risk of confusion.

At nightfall on April 5, the 4th Indian Division started to advance, and long before dawn on the 6th had penetrated deeply into the hills, capturing some 4,000 prisoners, mainly Italians. At 4.30 a.m., the 50th and 51st Divisions launched their assault supported by a bombardment from nearly 400 guns. The 50th was checked on the line of the anti-tank ditch, but the 51st soon achieved a breach in the enemy’s defences, although not so large as that which the 4th Indian Division had made. The two-pronged penetration offered opportunity for speedy exploitation by the armoured forces of the 10th Corps, under Horrocks, which had been posted close behind the front for the purpose.

At 8.45 a.m. Horrocks came forward to Tuker’s headquarters, and an office note recorded that: ‘Commander Fourth Indian Division pointed out to Commander 10 Corps that we had broken the enemy; that the way was clear for 10 Corps to go through; that immediate offensive action would finish the campaign in North Africa. Now was the time to get the whips out and spare neither men nor machines. Commander 10 Corps spoke to Army commander on the telephone requesting permission to put in 10 Corps to maintain the momentum of the attack.’ But there was an unfortunate delay in starting the move, and a greater one in starting the exploitation. Alexander’s Despatch states that ‘at 1200 hours General Montgomery put in 10 Corps’. By that time the German 90th Light Division had counterattacked and ejected the British 51st from some of the ground it had gained, partially closing the breach. Then, in the afternoon, when the leading armoured elements of Horrocks’s 10th Corps belatedly began pushing through it, they were checked by the deployment and counterattack of the 15th Panzer Division, the enemy’s only available reserve. Meanwhile nothing was done that day to use the heavyweight punch of the 10th Corps in exploiting the gap made by the 4th Indian Division.

Montgomery planned, in his characteristically deliberate way, to make his breakthrough the following morning, laying on a tremendous air attack and artillery bombardment to help in driving it through. But when morning came the enemy had vanished, and his intended knock-out blow turned into another follow-up of an army which had slipped out of his grasp.

But while he had lost his chance of a decisive victory, his opponents had lost their chance of sealing the breach, and maintaining their position on the Wadi Akarit line, because two of their three panzer divisions, the 10th and 21st, had been drawn away in turn to check the American threat to their rear. So on the previous evening, Messe had told Arnim that it was not possible to hold on at Wadi Akarit for another day, in the absence of such reinforcement, and had obtained his agreement for a withdrawal to the Enfidaville position, 150 miles to the north — the next line where the coastal plain was narrow, and also buttressed by a hill-barrier.

The Axis troops had begun withdrawing soon after dark on the 6th, and they reached the Enfidaville position safely on the 11th, although most of them had to march on foot. The leading troops of the Eighth Army, advancing on a two corps front, did not arrive there until two days later, although fully motorised and overwhelmingly strong compared with the weak German rearguards which occasionally deployed to put a brake on their pursuit.

In an effort to intercept the enemy’s retreat, Alexander launched the 9th Corps (of the First Army) on an attack to capture the Fondouk Pass and then to thrust fifty miles eastward through Kairouan to the coast town of Sousse, some twenty miles south of Enfidaville. This newly formed corps, commanded by John Crocker, was given the British 6th Armoured Division, an infantry brigade of the 46th Division, and the U.S. 34th Infantry Division, which had 250 tanks. The task of the infantry was to capture the commanding heights on either side of the Fondouk Pass, in order to clear a passage for the armoured drive. The attack, hurriedly mounted, was to start on the night of April 7-8. But the troops of the 34th Division were nearly three hours late in starting, and having lost the cloak of darkness were soon halted by the enemy’s fire, being all the more inclined to stop and take cover because of the damping experience of their previous attack only ten days before. Their failure to advance enabled the enemy to switch his fire northward to check the brigade of the 46th Division, which had been making better progress towards gaining the higher ground north of the pass. So Crocker decided to throw in his armour to force the passage rather than wait for the infantry to clear it, since the whole point of the attack depended on a quick breakthrough to the coastal plain.

This was delivered next day, April 9, by the 6th Armoured Division under Major-General Keightley, with a loss of thirty-four tanks (but only sixty-seven men) — a loss which seemed heavy, but was astonishingly light relatively to the difficulties it had to overcome in driving through minefields and running the gauntlet of the fifteen anti-tank guns covering the narrow passage — all of which were knocked out. It was not until the afternoon, however, that the armour got through, so Crocker decided to suspend the exploitation until next morning, and called the units back to lie up for the night in protected leaguer at the mouth of the pass. That decision was a cautious contrast to the boldness of his earlier one. But the minefield had still to be gapped for the passage of the wheeled transport, and reports showed that the German armour withdrawing from the south, under Bayerlein’s control, was already approaching Kairouan. The 6th Armoured Division resumed its eastward drive at dawn on April 10 but by the time it reached Kairouan the enemy’s retreating columns had already passed safely through this road-centre. The small German detachment (of two infantry battalions and an anti-tank company) holding the Fondouk sector had also slipped away, having fulfilled Bayerlein’s order that it must keep the 9th Corps in check until the morning of April 10, to cover the retreat of Messe’s army up the coastal corridor. Its successful extrication from such a precarious situation, threatened in front and rear by vastly superior forces, was a remarkable feat.