History of the Second World War (73 page)

The two Axis armies had now linked up for the defence of the hundred-mile arc from the north coast to Enfidaville. While this had improved their situation temporarily, the benefit was diminished by the losses they had suffered, particularly in equipment, so that even the shortened line was too long for their shrinking strength in face of the Allies’ mounting superiority in numbers and weapon power, now concentrated for the assault on this defensive arc. Moreover the ground that Arnim’s February counterstroke had gained near Medjez el Bab and northward had mostly been recaptured by the British in attacks carried out by Lieutenant-General Allfrey’s 5th Corps at the end of March and beginning of April — so that the Allies were well-placed for the delivery of fresh easterly thrusts against Tunis and Bizerta.

Political and psychological considerations strongly influenced the choice of the area for the Allies’ coming effort to settle the issue of the campaign by a knock-out blow. In a letter to Alexander on March 23, and others that followed, Eisenhower had urged that the main effort should be made in the north, in the First Army’s sector, and that Patton’s corps should be transferred there to take part in the decisive thrust, so as to serve the needs of American morale. Alexander accepted the suggestion in drafting his plans, and on April 10 directed Anderson to prepare the main attack for delivery about the 22nd. He also bowed to Patton’s vigorous protest against being placed under the First Army again, and arranged that the U.S. 2nd Corps should continue to operate separately under his own direction. At the same time he turned down Montgomery’s request that the 6th Armoured Division, which had just linked up with the Eighth Army, should be transferred to it — while notifying Montgomery that the Eighth Army’s part would become subsidiary, and that he must release one of his two armoured divisions (the 1st) to reinforce the First Army.

On this occasion the interests of policy and strategy coincided. The northern sector provided more scope for exerting the Allies’ superior strength, because of the wider avenues of attack and the shorter line of supply, whereas the southern approach by Enfidaville was less promising for effective action, being more cramping to the deployment of armoured forces.

The troops of the U.S. 2nd Corps were brought from the southern to the northern sector of Tunisia on a staging schedule involving the movement of some 2,400 vehicles a day across the British rear arc — a complex feat of staffwork (Omar Bradley now took over command of this corps from Patton, who returned to the task of planning the American part in the invasion of Sicily). The British 9th Corps was also switched northward, in a shorter move, and inserted on the right centre between the British 5th and French 19th Corps — which now adjoined the Eighth Army on the Allied right wing.

Under the ‘final plan’, issued by Alexander on April 16, the offensive was to be a converging four-pronged thrust. The Eighth Army was to strike on the night of April 19, with Horrocks’s 10th Corps, through Enfidaville northward towards Hammamet and Tunis with the aim of cutting across the neck of the Cap Bon peninsula and blocking access to it, in order to prevent the rest of the Axis forces withdrawing there for a prolonged stand. This aim called for an advance of at least fifty miles through a very difficult bottleneck area. The French 19th Corps, next in line, was to keep up a threatening pressure and exploit any opportunities arising from the advance of its neighbours. The British 9th Corps, which had one infantry and two armoured divisions, was to strike in the early morning of April 22 between Pont-du-Fahs and Goubellat, with the aim of opening the way for an armoured break-through there. The British 5th Corps on its left, with three infantry divisions and a tank brigade, was to make the main effort and strike at nightfall that same day near Medjez el Bab against the fifteen-mile sector held by two regiments of the German 334th Division. The U.S. 2nd Corps was to launch its attack in the northern sector a day later; this forty-mile stretch was held by the three regiments of the Manteuffel Division and one of the 334th — but their strength was less than 8,000 men compared with the 95,000 of the U.S. 2nd Corps.

The prospects of such a general offensive — delivered almost simultaneously on every sector — looked very favourable. On the Allied side there were now twenty divisions with a combat strength of well over 300,000 men and 1,400 tanks. The total strength of the nine German divisions which formed the backbone of the defence along the hundred-mile arc was estimated, correctly, by the Allied intelligence to be barely 60,000 men, and they had less than 100 tanks altogether — one German report gives the total fit for action as only forty-five. Moreover a spoiling attack that Arnim launched south of Medjez el Bab on the night of April 20, although it penetrated some five miles in the dark, was repulsed when daylight came — and failed to upset the mounting and delivery of the British attack in this sector.

But the Allied general offensive, though delivered on time, did not go according to plan. In defence the Germans still proved very stubborn, and skilful in utilising difficult ground to block superior strength. Thus Alexander’s ‘final’ plan miscarried, and had to be recast — becoming the penultimate one.

The Eighth Army’s attack at Enfidaville, with three infantry divisions, met tough opposition in the hills bordering the coastal strip, and suffered a costly check — belying the optimistic belief of Montgomery and Horrocks that the enemy could be ‘bounced’ out of this bottleneck. The Italians here fought as vigorously as the Germans. Farther inland, the massed armour of the British 9th Corps succeeded in penetrating the enemy’s front to a depth of eight miles in the Kourzia area north-west of Pont-du-Fahs, but was then brought to a standstill by the intervention of Arnim’s only substantial mobile reserve, the depleted 10th Panzer Division, which now had less than a tenth of the attacking force’s tank strength (which was 360 fit for action). The main attack, by the British 5th Corps, made slow progress in face of the tenacious resistance of the two German infantry regiments defending this central sector, and after four days’ hard fighting was only six to seven miles beyond Medjez el Bab. It was then definitely stopped, and in places pushed back, by the intervention of an improvised panzer brigade composed of most of the remaining tanks of Army Group Afrika. On the northern sector, the U.S. 2nd Corps made little progress during the first two days of its attack, through very rugged country, and then found on April 25 that the enemy had slipped back stealthily to another defence line a few miles farther back. In sum, the Allied offensive had come to a halt everywhere without achieving a definite breach anywhere.

But the Axis forces had strained themselves and their scanty resources to the limit in foiling it. By April 25 their two armies were reduced to about one-quarter of a refill unit of fuel — i.e. only enough for twenty-five kilometres — while the ammunition remaining was estimated as barely sufficient for three days’ further fighting. Scarcely any supplies were now reaching them to replenish the ammunition and fuel on which their hope of partying thrusts depended. Here lay the decisive factor in the issue of the Allies’ next offensive. Food supplies were also becoming desperately short — Arnim later said that ‘even without the Allied offensive I should have had to capitulate by the 1st of June at the latest because we had no more to eat’.

At the end of February Rommel and Arnim had reported that at least 140,000 tons of supplies a month would be required to maintain the fighting power of the Axis forces, if the Supreme Command decided to hold on to Tunisia. The authorities in Rome, acutely conscious of the shipping difficulty, put the figure at 120,000 tons, while reckoning that up to a third of the total might be sunk in transit. But in the event only 29,000 tons reached the Axis forces during the month of March, a quarter of it by air. By contrast, the Americans alone brought some 400,000 tons of supplies safely into North African ports that month. In April the Axis supplies dwindled to 23,000 tons, and in the first week of May to a trickle of 2,000 tons. That was the measure of the grip which Allied airpower and seapower (mainly British) aided by excellent intelligence evaluation of the enemy’s shipping movements, had established on the trans-Mediterranean supply routes. The figures amply account for the sudden collapse of the Axis forces’ resistance — and explain the collapse far more clearly than do any of the Allied leaders’ accounts.

Alexander’s fresh ‘final plan’ emerged, indirectly, from the block in the Enfidaville bottleneck. On April 21, when the failure of the three-division attack there had become painfully plain, Montgomery was driven to suspend it because of the mounting losses — a suspension that had helped Arnim to shift all his remaining armour northward to stop the main British attack from breaking through east of Medjez el Bab, as already related. Montgomery planned to resume his effort on the 29th, concentrating it in the narrow coastal strip, without trying to secure the high ground inland. This directive, though accepted by Horrocks, met with strong objection from the two foremost divisional commanders, Tuker and Freyberg. Their warning arguments were supported by the early check suffered when the fresh attack was delivered. Next day, April 30, Alexander arrived on the scene to discuss the situation with Montgomery, and then gave orders that the two best available divisions of the Eighth Army should be switched to the First Army for a fresh and reinforced thrust in the Medjez el Bab sector. That alternative course had been urged by Tuker before the abortive Enfidaville attack. It might well have been adopted earlier, for the Enfidaville attack had not even fulfilled the limited object of pinning down the Axis forces there and preventing the reinforcement of the central sector.

The switch, once decided, was quickly put into effect. The two picked divisions, the 4th Indian and 7th Armoured, started on their long north-westward move before dark that same day. For the 7th Armoured, which was lying back in reserve, it entailed a circuitous journey of nearly 300 miles along rough roads, but this was completed in a couple of days — the tanks being carried on transporters. The two divisions were transferred to the 9th Corps, which was entrusted with the decisive stroke, and itself side-stepped northward to concentrate for the purpose behind the sector held by the 5th Corps. Horrocks himself was also included in the transfer, to take over command of the 9th Corps, as Crocker had just been disabled by an accidental injury incurred in demonstrating a new mortar — a personal stroke of ill luck at a moment of great opportunity.

Meanwhile Bradley’s U.S. 2nd Corps had resumed its attack in the northern sector on the night of April 26. In four days of stiff fighting its efforts to advance through this hilly region were baffled by the enemy’s obstinate resistance. But persistent pressure strained the enemy’s resources so heavily, and produced such an acute shortage of ammunition on his side, that he was compelled to withdraw to a fresh and less easily defensible line east of Mateur. The withdrawal was skilfully carried out during the nights of May 1 and 2 without interference, but the new line was only fifteen miles from the base-port of Bizerta, so that the defence had now become perilously lacking in depth — as it was, already, in the Medjez el Bab sector facing Tunis.

Such lack of depth for defence made fatal the defenders’ extreme shortage of supplies, and this went far to assure the decisiveness of the fresh offensive that was now being mounted by the Allies for launching on May 6
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For once the crust was pierced there would be no possibility of prolonging resistance by elastic defence and manoeuvre in retreat. Although the Axis forces had managed to frustrate the previous attacks they had succeeded at the price of almost exhausting their scanty stocks, being left with only enough ammunition for a brief reply to the attackers’ overwhelming fire and only enough fuel for the shortest of countermoves. Moreover they were devoid of air cover as the airfields in Tunisia had become untenable and almost all the remaining aircraft had been withdrawn to Sicily.

The impending blow came as no surprise to the Axis commanders, as they had intercepted Allied radio messages which revealed the switch of large forces from the Eighth Army to the First. But awareness of the blow was of little help in meeting it when they lacked the means.

In Alexander’s new plan, ‘Vulcan’, the breakthrough was to be made by a hammer-blow with the 9th Corps, passing through the 5th, and striking on a very narrow front — less than two miles wide — in the valley south of the Medjerda River. The assault was to be delivered by a massive phalanx composed of the 4th British and 4th Indian Divisions with four supporting battalions of ‘infantry’ tanks, closely followed by the 6th and 7th Armoured Divisions. The armoured strength comprised more than 470 tanks. After the two infantry divisions had penetrated the defence to a depth of some three miles, the two armoured divisions were to drive through and in their first bound reach the area of St Cyprien, twelve miles from the starting line and half way to Tunis. Alexander emphasised in his instructions that ‘the primary object is to capture Tunis’, so as to forestall any rally, and that there must be no pause for ‘mopping up localities which the enemy continues to hold’.

As a preliminary to the 9th Corps assault, the 5th Corps was ordered to capture the flanking height of the Djebel Bou Aoukaz on the evening of May 5 — a mission which was achieved after some stiff fighting. After that the chief task of the 5th Corps was ‘to keep open the funnel’ through which the 9th Corps was thrusting. In the event it proved to be no problem, as the enemy no longer had the means of developing an effective counterattack

Opening the funnel might have been more difficult if the 9th Corps assault had been launched in daylight as originally intended — in view of the First Army’s lack of experience in night attacks. But on Tuker’s insistence the plan was altered and zero hour was fixed for 3 a.m., so as to gain full benefit from the cloak of obscurity provided by a moonless night. At his urging, too, the customary barrage was replaced by successive concentrations of fire, centrally controlled, on all known enemy strongpoints, and the provision of artillery ammunition was doubled, raising it to a thousand rounds per gun. These concentrated shoots put down a shell on every two yards of front, so that the defences were plastered five times more thickly than by the barrage at Alamein the previous autumn. The paralysing effect of these concentrated shoots, by the 400 guns immediately supporting the assault, was increased and extended by the terrific air attack starting at dawn, which comprised over 200 sorties.