Operation Ochsenkopf opened on 26th, and von Manteuffel's Division captured the station at Sedjenane. Witzig's parachute-engineer battalion made an encircling move to attack the Allied forces in Mateur from behind and to drive these towards the advancing Barenthin Regiment. A sea-borne landing by Koenen's Battalion, supported by 10th Bersaglieri Regiment on land, captured Cap Serrat. Sidi Nsir, the objective of 47th Regiment, could not be reached for torrential rain had washed away the roads, although the Alpine troops attached to 334th Division, which was attacking Oued Zarga. battled forward under the most appalling difficulties. The heavy Tiger tanks which were to support the attack could not be moved off the roads because of the state of the ground and without their help the situation at Sidi Nsir could not be exploited. On the right wing the intention to thrust through the Allied lines at Goubellat and around Djebel Mansour to attain the Siliana region could not make good progress because of incessant rain.
On the extreme northern front it seemed as if Tabarka might be captured and with this in mind Manteuffel asked Arnim for more troops to exploit the situation. There were no reserves and by the time that Manteuffel had reorganised his tired troops and could continue this thrust on Djebel Abiod the Allied defences had been built up.
At Oued Zarga the positions which had been captured allowed the Germans to dominate the Allied supply route with artillery fire by day and at night patrols went out to mine the roads. But no further advance was possible and the attack was halted on 4 March.
In the south Medjez sector the line was actually withdrawn to the position it held before the offensive opened, the Hermann Goering Ja'ger Battalion was driven back at Goubellat and the effort to cut Medjez from the south failed. But in the southern border at Tunisia preparations were in hand to launch a spoiling attack against the British Army's preparations on the Mareth front. The great weakness of the Mareth Line was that it could be outflanked by an Allied drive through the Foum Tatahouine pass and to disrupt the British time-table an attack was proposed to strike north of Medenine.
The situation at the beginning of March 1943 was that Rommel's Panzer Army Africa had only 34 German and 14 Italian battalions of infantry to hold the line. This means that each battalion had a front of 8 miles to cover and to back up this weak infantry force there were 49 batteries of artillery, 33 of which were light field guns. An additional five battalions of low-calibre troops held the seaward defences and these were supported by 15 batteries of fixed artillery.
With such weaknesses there could be no line in depth, indeed there was no line as such and it was not protected by a sufficient artillery force. Although the country into which the Panzer Army was withdrawing favoured the defence, the steep djebels reduced the effectiveness of Allied armour, there was no avoiding the issue that a concentrated infantry offensive would crumple the German front at Mareth like paper. Such reserves as could be scraped together once put into the line to restore a difficult situation would leave nothing to halt a further Allied penetration. The obvious solutions were either to withdraw to more favourable positions — in Rommel's opinion the Gabes area - or to carry out a series of spoiling attacks to delay the Allied build-up for the final blow.
The difficulties facing the armies in Africa were still not appreciated either at OKW or at Commando Supremo and neither Rommel's requests nor von Arnim's questions on supplies were granted or answered. Von Arnim indeed was to comment bitterly that one cannot fire from guns the shells which lie at the bottom of the Mediterranean.
For the German commanders the situation was nothing short of calamitous. The 5th Panzer Army had only 34 serviceable tanks and Rommel's Army a total of 89 German and 24 Italian vehicles. The amounts of material reaching Africa fell a long way short of the absolute minimum and of the average figure of 90,000 tons per month no less than 25 per cent would be sunk before it had reached Tunisia. Thus the amount which would actualls arrive in the country would be barely sufficient for an army which was not engaged in active fighting. When Hitler was made aware of the African theatre's critical supply situation he immediately ordered the tonnage to be raised to 150,000 tons but gave no proposals on how this fantastic target could be achieved.
The only firm statement which Rommel received from Kesselring was Hitler's order that the Mareth Line was to be held to the last and that any British moves to outflank the defensive positions were to be met with offensive operations. Once again the Fiihrer was either ignorant of the true facts or chose to ignore the facts that the Army had only 1.5 per cent of its battle requirements and only 0.5 per cent of its stated ammunition needs. In any case there was insufficient fuel to carry out Hitler's demand for aggressive operations.
With von Arnim, Kesselring fared even worse than with Rommel. Rommel had never had any of the promises fulfilled which OKW, or Hitler, or the Commando Supremo had made to him in respect of supplies and arms but this situation was a completely new one to von Arnim who expected promises and schedules to be kept. To Kesselring's criticisms of his conduct of the Army, von Arnim asked what his role was and received the reply that he was to halt any Allied advance by weakening this while 1st Panzer Army held Mareth to the last. Arnim then referred to the constant shortages in supplies, arms, and men but this was ignored and Kesselring asked instead the reasons for moving his panzer divisions. The simple answer, von Arnim replied, was that in the north there was a strong Allied army, in the south there was the strong 8th Army, and in the centre the growing power of an American Army whose strength he estimated as three divisions and against which he could throw only one regiment. He returned to the question of supplies but Kesselring refused to be drawn into stating actual tonnages or figures and then left to fly back to the unreal world of Commando Supremo and the OKW [25], where paper divisions had the strength of real ones, where ships and convoys were never sunk, and where armies, at least on paper, were always up to strength. He left behind him in Tunisia the men of the Axis armies, actors in a tragedy whose prologue began at Mareth at 20.30hrs on the evening of 16 March.
But before the British blow fell Rommel had planned and executed his pre-emptive blow at Mareth. His proposal for a pincer operation was rejectee as unworkable by Messe and other officers for they considered that the advance by the northern pincer, in total darkness, and across areas in which the Germans had laid extensive mine-fields with sophisticated anti-handling devices, to be impossible. Gaps, they said, would have to be blown through the mine-fields and such activity would warn the 8th Army both of the time and the direction of the attack. Rommel allowed himself to be influenced and changed his plan to a direct and frontal assault upon the British concentration and artillery area.
The Panzer Army Africa attack opened at dawn on 6 March, two days later than planned, and this short period had been sufficient for Montgomery to reorganise his forces. The German plan was for 10th, 15th, and 21st Panzer Divisions to move down upon the British while 164th Division protected one flank of the thrust and Mannerini Group defended the area to the west. The 90th Light would make a diversionary attack southwards. The 10th Panzer emerged from the mountain passes and drove towards Metameur while the combined strength of 15th and 21st Panzer passed through the Pistoia Division and struck towards the hills north-east of Metameur around which the British artillery was grouped.