The End in Afrika
The air of resigned acceptance which is so evident in the OKW War Diary entry for 31 March, that 'no new Allied thrusts have been made on the front of 5th Panzer Army', indicates how completely the initiative had passed into Allied hands and the realisation that the end of the war in Africa was only a question of time.
German planners were in no doubt that the Allies were concentrating their forces for the decisive battle. As a first step there was a reshuffle of forces which brought II United States Corps to face Manteuffel's Division and in the battle line around Medjez there were several British infantry divisions, freshly arrived from the United Kingdom, as well as the advanced guards of those desert formations which were eventually to be in the van of the battle for Tunis. [27]
Steady pressure exerted all through the last weeks of March had reduced the bridgehead area. The Medjez sector blazed into activity as British attacks came in against 334th Division on 7 April, and fighting for strategically important mountain crests continued for days. South of Medjez el Bab, there were struggles to win commanding positions around Fondouk. To the northwest of Medjez el Bab the 78th Infantry Division captured Longstop during Easter week thus regaining a feature which had been in German hands since Fischer's December offensive.
The fires of battle reached other sectors of the British front and the Hermann Goering Division came under almost continuous assault from the middle of the month although it met every British attack with a counter-attack and by such spirited defence actually lost very little ground. This German elite formation was used to spearhead an operation to determine the location of the British concentration area behind the Medjez front and [28] by attack to delay the British preparations. This operation, code-named Fliederblute, a combined panzer/grenadier attack, was launched during the night of 19/20 April.
The sky behind the German line was alight with gun fire as the barrage opened the advance, with a panzer wave escorted by paratroops of the Herman Goering Division clinging to the outsides of the vehicles. The 2nd Battalion the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry was overrun as the armoured vehicles swept across their positions but the 25-pounder guns of 4th Division's artillery fired all night until by dawn when, with their mission accomplished, the German panzers and their Grenadiers rolled back across their start line. Through this reconnaissance in force it was clear to 5th Panzer Army that a massive build-up of Allied strength was in progress and this in a sector with few natural defences. Army Group looked for units which it could put into the threatened sector to thicken the line and moved 10th Panzer from its positions in the south, for it seemed that the Enfidaville line would be strong enough to hold.
Despite local losses this line did, in fact, hold and as the mountains absorbed the Allied strength, so more and more German troops could be transferred to the central sector. Army group intelligence appreciations located an iron ring around the Axis armies made up of 1 French and 3 American divisions on the extreme northern sector and to the west of Mateur,
5 British divisions in the Medjez el Bab area, 2 British and 2 American divisions in the Pont du Fahs region, a French Corps south of that place, and 6 British or Imperial divisions, as well as 2 brigades situated along the Enfidaville line. Of this great force no less than 7 were armoured divisions and when Montgomery moved part of his army from Enfidaville to Medjez el Bab the British had poised for battle in this sector, 2 armoured divisions and 2 armoured brigades to spearhead an attack which would be followed by 5 infantry divisions.
The panzer regiment of 21st Panzer Division was moved north and shortly thereafter followed all the anti-tank weapons which could be spared. The 15th Panzer Division moved its panzer regiment towards the central sector and located the main of division to the west of Tunis, ready to meet a deep Allied thrust.
Throughout April the Allied attacks continued, growing in frequency and intensity. From north to south small actions flared along the battle front as new units were 'blooded' in battle. But this was sometimes a 'bloody' affair for the attackers and in the battles around Peter's Corner, a bend in the Medjez-Tunis road, infantry battalions of 4th British Division lost heavily battling against the skilful, battle-hardened, and unshaken veterans of Koch's 5th Para Regiment and the Hermann Goering Division.
It is undeniable that under this Allied pressure a certain confusion existed as units moved, dug in, and received orders to move again. One officer wrote:
'Here the situation changes hourly. An order is followed by a counter-order. Since 11th (April) the fighting has entered its final stages and the task of maintaining the bridgehead is really only a question of time. With men alone we could hold the front b'ut materially we are in an inferior position. The Luftwaffe cannot supply us and that which comes by sea is a drop in the ocean ... we are on the defensive because we cannot fight tanks with the bodies of men and with shot guns. Yesterday Battle Group Wolff had one 7.5cm pak and a 5cm pak. The latter did not work.'
The pattern of Allied tactics was now to secure jump-off points for the final assault and the German units were switched from one threatened sector to another. One battle group commander reported that his unit had withdrawn 50 miles without loss and that the sector he was presently holding was seven miles wide. Of another battle group commander it was said that he had not slept for four days. In the north 334th Division and the Barenthin Regiment fought desperately to deny Hill 609 to the Americans but the pressure was too great and by the end of April American troops had attained the last commanding height west of Mateur. In the north ManteuffeFs Division slowly gave ground as it carried out a fighting withdrawal on Bizerta and 962nd Regiment of 999th Division, moving back to new positions, turned at bay to face the Allied units which were pressing close upon it. A report written by Sergeant Scharwachter of No 5 Company 962nd Regiment, who was wounded and flown back to Germany, gives details of the fighting:
'American troops whose lines lay between one and five miles distant from our own crossed a mine-field in 'no man's land' to begin their attack on 25 April. They went to ground under our fire but under a well co-ordinated barrage they soon worked their way to within hand grenade range. My platoon covered the withdrawal of our battalion to higher ground and was heavily engaged. We had heavy losses because my men had had no recent combat experience. One 42-year-old man who had been convicted of treason and who had helped to beat back the American assaults said to me, "Sergeant, I don't care what happens now. I have redeemed my honour" and another man stood up in his slit trench firing a machine gun from the hip and driving back the advancing Americans until he was wounded.'
But even fighting such actions they could not hold back the Allied drive and Mateur was occupied by 3 May. It was now clear that, however desperately Army Group shuffled its available forces, these were neither sufficient in number, nor logistically capable of withstanding the anticipated blow. Units were being overrun by the advancing Allies. Colonel Wolff reported on one unit of his division which was overtaken by the speed of the Allied drive: 'Three hundred men were isolated behind the enemy lines but now have fought their way back to us. Some were missing for more than 10 days. One group is reported to be still free and is being fed by Arabs. They are still hoping to break through to us.'
Army group echeloned its effectives in depth along the line which they expected the British attack to follow and had brought into the final battle a miscellaneous collection. Batteries of 20th Flak Division, whose principal task it had been to defend the Tunisian cities from air raid, found themselves grouped to the south-west of the capital preparing to fight in a ground role and the last 30 vehicles of 10th Panzer were moved from the Medjerda river line and placed as a deep reserve in the Massicault area.