Funck’s 7th had jabbed the cumbersome British 1st Armored Division on the nose as it came up the road from Homs to Tarhuna. Rommel’s crossbow had fired, and now the whole of von Bismarck’s 21st Panzer was through a narrow three kilometer gap in the line and breaking out into the open ground beyond. 15th Panzer had been moving all night along the narrow mountain roads through the high country, snaking their way inexorably south. They would emerge east of Tarhuna, some twelve kilometers from the town, and they would swing right around the horseshoe formation Briggs had pointed their way, using the speed of their faster Leopards and Lions relative to the Valentines, Cromwells, and American M4s.
The ill-fated 150th Brigade would now find itself surrounded on all sides in the swirling chaos of that dark desert night. The battalions were still trying to withdraw to the rear, but ran right into Rommel’s 501st Heavy Tiger Battalion. They were cut off, confused as to what was happening, lost in the silt and shadow of that terrible night.
Yet Horrocks’ instincts before dusk had set him on the right course. He knew approximately where the 150th Brigade had been advancing, and therefore knew the location of the enemy breakthrough. Now he was moving with all the speed he could muster, pulling 7th Armored Division out of its attack on that airfield, and racing for the pass behind him that would lead to the flank of the presumed enemy thrust. It extended from the ruin of Gsar Teniza below that escarpment, through a low depression to the solitary spike of Hill 357, called Tummet by the locals.
The Germans had seen the gap, looking ahead in this mad game of chess, and there they had posted their AT battalion and the Pioneers of 21st Panzer Division as a blocking force. Brigadier Roddick’s 4th Light Armored Brigade was leading, with mostly M5 light tanks, a few medium Grants, and several dozen armored cars. They pushed up to the ruins, sent in infantry to occupy them, and then called for artillery to range in on the German AT guns.
Roberts 22nd Armored Brigade was on their right, closer to Tummet. They had the medium Grants, with a few Crusader IIIs, but found no enemy had as yet reached that hill. The map indicated a road up ahead to the east, and Roberts had little doubt that the Germans were using it that night. It would be two more long hours, with both sides feeling their way forward in the darkness towards the barest hint of a soft red glow on the far horizon.
As dawn broke on the 14th of January, the Lions were raging east towards that rising sun. The entire 150th Infantry Brigade had been overrun and bypassed by the concentrated sweep of Rommel’s mobile forces. The 15th Panzer was around Briggs’ horseshoe formation and already flanking the 1st Armored Division. Horrocks and General John Harding had moved the 7th Armored smartly, and by now it was engaged with defensive units the Germans had assigned to cover the pass between the ruins and Tummet. Further east, Funck’s Lions at dawn were on the prowl.
The question now was where they might be going? It was 40 kilometers to the coast road, across open desert broken occasionally by studded hills, long abandoned shrine sites, the occasional bir, and a network of wrinkled wadis. It was here, at his moment of triumphant breakthrough, that the Desert Fox had to be very wily.
Rommel had been up on Hill 410, about 10 klicks west of Tarhuna. From that height he could see the wide swath of dust that marked the progress of his bold enveloping maneuver, and clearly make out the vast horseshoe of the British 1st Armored. He was receiving reports from his leading units and learned that 15th Panzer had a battalion of tanks, its recon element, and the pioneer battalion well past the lowermost end of that horseshoe. It was time to change their direction and turn them north towards the road to Homs.
Well south of that sector, three companies of the 1st Battalion 25th Panzer Regiment in Funck’s division were free to follow the road south and east if they wished. It would dog the long winding course of a deep wadi for over 35 kilometers, and then lead to a broken region of rugged hills, more wadis, and ragged escarpments. Even there it would be another 40 kilometers to the coast, and by the time those panzers got there, they would be out of fuel and over 100 kilometers from any supporting supply units.
No, thought Rommel. The action at Mersa Brega taught me that this British Army is simply too large to try and bag it like that. If I order such a move, O’Connor will do exactly what he did in that battle. He’ll stubbornly hold his ground, and dare me to try and get to the coast. And he undoubtedly has one or even two more infantry divisions back there in reserve. We’ve seen nothing of the Indian division, or the South Africans. So what I must do now is fight these armored divisions and wreck them. We don’t want the coast road. We want to hurt them again, just as we did at Mersa Brega. It’s time to fight. I’ve got the two British Armored divisions isolated from one another. Perhaps I can destroy both!
He got on the radio and sent out another coded order for the 90th Light to advance on the remaining two brigades of the Northumbrian division. KG Ramcke was ordered to go with them, and he had the special units of Sonderverband 288 on his extreme southern flank to move into action as well.
As the morning wore on to mid-day, the situation changed. O’Connor did have a reserve division at hand, the 4th Indian, and it had been motoring up from a point well south of Misrata on an inland track that ran parallel to the coast road, finally reaching the front. Randow’s 15th Panzer was turning Brooks’ flank from the south, when the Central Indian Horse came up on a company of his 8th Panzer Regiment. The full division was not far behind it, advancing on two roads in column of march.
It was too late to stop the turning attack, which had already surged north to find the artillery park and headquarters of Brooks’ division. It was a wild hour, with the Brigade HQ of Fischer’s 22nd Armored dug in on Hill 422, and the division headquarters itself under direct attack. Four battalions of artillery were in that area, and some had to depress their barrels to engage the German tanks at near point blank range. The road to Homs and the coast was cut when a company of Lions stormed into the hamlet of Gasar Da’uun, but O’Connor was only 7 kilometers from the action up on the higher promontory of Hill 455. There he had a very good view of the battle, and he could also see that his reserve division was about to make a most timely arrival.
Randow was going to smash the southern arm of the horseshoe position, but soon find his own flank seriously compromised by the arrival of the 4th Indian Division. It was this sort of rollicking chaos that was now taking hold, as units emerged from the smoke and dust of the battle, blundered into other units, some friendly, some enemy.
Meanwhile, the action on the coast road took a turn for the worse for the Italians when the combined weight of 51st Highland, the two brigades of 44th Home County, and the heavy tanks of 23rd Armored Brigade finally broke the their defense. Littorio was shattered, its battalions falling back and struggling to regroup. The town of Negazza was overrun, and even the two battalions of Randow’s Panzergrenadiers were forced to withdraw. The British were now through the narrow defile and advancing onto the widening coastal plain on the road to Castelverde.
When Rommel got the news, he swore… The Italians again. Yet, like a good chess player, he had kept a piece or two in reserve himself. The Trento Motorized Division was east of Tripoli where it had been improving defenses and digging an anti-tank ditch. He immediately gave it orders to advance along the coast road through Castelverde to reinforce that flank. He would not see all that he had won with his panzer divisions lost in an hour by the Italians, but he had no German troops available to answer the crisis. The Trento Division had proved reliable in the past, and he hoped they could at least put a cork in the bottle and buy him some time.