If the Allies learned much to their future advantage as a result of the fighting in Tunisia then the German and Italian troops were to learn the bitter lesson of their vulnerability to Allied air power. By early spring this superiority had driven the Luftwaffe from the skies which it had dominated from the earliest days of the fighting and left, naked to the American and British air attacks, the transport aircraft lumbering slowly through the skies above the Mediterranean and the Axis merchant ships steaming their way through its waters. Both ran an Allied gauntlet and suffered terrible losses. It has been calculated that at the bottom of the sea lie more than twice as many tanks as the desert and Tunisian armies ever received.
Other than the experience of the loss of air cover the fighting in Tunisia provided no new experience for the Germans. Their flexibility in the matter of battle groups, their ability to improvise, the exploitation of time and means to overcome shortages and difficulties were no new phenomena. Only at highest command level was there hesitation and lack of direction. At medium and junior level, as well as at that of the ordinary soldier there was a determination to do the job well, and in this they succeeded.
In a campaign which lasted six months it would not be possible to describe in so few words as this book contains each or every major action. Some are more important or interesting than others and it is these which have been selected to represent the whole. The period covering the landings, the thrust and the riposte leading up to the battle of Longstop Hill in December 1942, is the first to be described. Then follows an account of the fighting in which the Axis forces tried to expand their bridgehead during which period there occurred the action by 10th Panzer Division at Sidi Sou Zid which led to the battle of Kasserine Pass.
By this time the desert army of Erwin Rommel and the panzer army of von Arnim had combined in a prickly partnership with each leader having different ideas of how to conduct operations. British pressure by 8th Army on the southern Tunisian front led to the evacuation of successive defensive positions and illustrating these actions is the account of the fighting by 164th Infantry Division in the Schott and the Enfindaville lines.
The final phase of the war in Africa is covered in a description of the engagements in which 999th (Africa) Division took part on the western front of Tunisia. This division was made up of men convicted for military crimes: desertion, insubordination, striking a superior, and neglect of duty. Only through battle could these men win back their military honour and, although their unit never reached full strength but was made up of individual battle groups, the men served loyally and bravely winning back not only their own self-respect but more important still the respect of their military comrades.
To the desert veterans of both sides the war in Tunisia was completely different to that which they had fought in Egypt and Cyrenaica. The rocky mountains of Tunisia limited the horizons of the men who had come up out of Egypt. For the men of the old Africa Corps there would be no longer the exhilarating hundred-mile advances; no more the battlefield restricted to a 50-mile wide strip of desert south of the Via Balbia; no more the goals of Alexandria and the Suez canal to spur them on. Instead there were the eternal bare hills or djebels, the ever-vigilant OPs, and an awareness to every soldier of the Axis armies that with defeat Tunis would become the first of a series of stepping stones leading on to Sicily, from thence to the mainland of Italy and. finally, to Germany and to the defeat of the German—Italian Axis.
On 8 November, the day of the Allied landings, an ad hoc collection of remnants from Ramcke's Para Brigade was formed into Battle Group Sauer and flown to Tunisia to secure the airfields at La Marsa and at El Aouina. Fighter aircraft of 53rd Geschwader touched down on 9 November and these first 27 machines were followed by 24 JU 87 Stuka dive-bombers. On successive days JU 52 and ME 323 machines came in bringing supplies, light anti-aircraft guns, and the two battalions of Koch's 5th Para Regiment. These landings met with no resistance from the French for diplomatic negotiations had ensured that the Germans would not be met as enemies.
Colonel Harlinghausen of the Luftwaffe was given overall command of the Tunis lodgement area and Colonel Lederer assumed the same powers in the perimeter around Bizerta. Once these bridgeheads had been consolidated then began the build-up of the forces and, to effect this, all available means of sea and air transport were switched from supplying Rommel's army to the reinforcement of the Tunisian front. So efficient was this organisation that by 12 November, two Italian ships had docked at Bizerta and within three weeks nearly 2000 men, 160 armoured vehicles, 127 pieces of artillery, and over 1000 soft-skinned vehicles, in addition to other military supplies, had been brought in by sea alone. Germany was fortunate in having a pool of transport aircraft and these were used to air-land reinforcements at a rate of nearly 1000 each day. By the end of November more than 15,000 troops had been air-lifted into the two perimeters.
As these new troops arrived they were fitted into gaps in the bridgehead, irrespective of regimental or national allegiance. Two infantry battalions from the Italian Superga Division were among the first to arrive and came under command of Battle Group Sauer. By such draconian methods, and as early as 14 November, the sector Tunis South had been secured. With a firm base line the German commanders could fling out battle groups westwards to gain ground and to seize important tactical positions. Koch's paratroops moved out in an advance to contact and hoped that this would not take place until they had established bridgeheads across the Medjerda river at Jedeida, Tebourba, and Medjez el Bab. Between the Allies and the Axis there was to be a race to see who could bring the stronger force to the decisive point in the fastest time and, although the Axis powers had reacted quickly, the western Allies had not been inactive nor unimaginative. [20]
A British paratroop attack had captured Souk el Arba and the British force went on towards the important road centre of Beja. A British sea-borne landing had captured the ports of Bougie and Bone and had brought two brigades of the British 78th Division to within 140 miles of Bizerta. The next obvious objective for both sides was the town of Medjez el Bab, the gateway to Tunis. In the several sectors at which they were disposed during the night of 16 November the Axis and the Allied soldiers prepared themselves for battle. With the next day possibly, within the next two days certainly, contact would be made with the enemy and the battle for Tunisia would begin.
General Nehring's return to Africa on 14 November was dramatic in that his aircraft crashed on landing and was totally wrecked. Determined not to let this accident upset his plans he called conferences in Tunis and Bizerta and. before returning to Rome to make his own assessment of the situation to Kesselring, he ordered that the troops in the Bizerta area be pushed westwards from Mateur to Tabarka to frustrate the British drive from Bone.
Nehring's opinion of the general situation was that the Allies had landed between 5 to 6 divisions in the initial assault and that this number had increased by a regular flow of reinforcements to a strength of between 9 and 13 divisions. On the German side there was no complete formation, excepting only the two paratroop battalions. There were so few troops that there was no real continuous line but a chain of qutposts defending the two main towns of Tunis and Bizerta. Behind this outpost chain there were two strategic areas -Mateur and Tebourba — around which there was grouped a small reserve whose task it would be, should the Allies break through, to delay their advance and to protect the disembarkation of the Axis reinforcements. The only real mobile reserve available to Nehring was a panzer company in Tunis and in Bizerta and these belonged to a panzer battalion which had been on its way to reinforce Rommel.