The retreat was finally halted when Blade Force was backstopped by CCB of the 1st Armored Division. And now the largest tank battle of the engagement ensued, with two battalions of the 10th Panzer Division, augmented by the 190th Panzer Battalion plowing into CCB and the remnants of Blade Force.
There were about 30 tanks and mobile AT guns in each battalion, some the new Marder III and even three of the 88mm Nashorns. The Americans had over 100 M5 Stuarts, a pair of Shermans, and 33 M3 Lees, but what they lacked in armored hitting power with all those light tanks, they made up in Armored infantry. That and the timely arrival of Terry Allan with the 26th RCT was enough to stop the German attack.
Allen massed both his 16th and 18th RCTs for another try at taking M’sila back from the Germans. He was determined to show Patton what his men could do, and the division did not disappoint. They were aided by heavy artillery fires, two battalions from 3rd Infantry, and the Armored infantry of CCA, 1st Armored. That force was enough to eject II Battalion of the 104th Panzergrenadier Regiment, which also had support from the division pioneers.
The pattern here was finally reaching a decision point. The Germans, with more experienced troops, better tanks and AT weapons, were punching hard, driving the Americans back, and holding the line. They were more agile, with a sharp jab and good right hand when they counterattacked. But Patton just kept leaning in and body punching with everything he had. It was the weight of four US divisions against 10th Panzer and two supporting brigade sized kampfgruppes, and that would eventually retake M’sila for the Americans. They took back the town with hard fighting, and flanked it to the north.
Fischer got on the radio to Von Arnim, advising him of the situation. “The pressure is too great here at M’sila. I’m still holding, but I’m not sure how much longer that would be wise. What’s happening at Algiers?”
“The British are pushing very hard. Conrath stopped them, but I’m afraid it’s the same situation for him. You have half his troops where you stand now.”
“Yes, and our line is strung out all along the mountains from M’sila to Algiers. Beyond that, we have the equivalent of another full division just posted to positions on the coast between Algiers and Bougie. If we moved to a line south of that latter port, we could put everything on one good front.”
“Agreed,” said Von Arnim. “But I don’t think I can get permission from OKW for a withdrawal. Not while the Corporal is in charge there.”
“Well, you will have to decide. I’m still covering the southern rail line east, but if they get through, then you will only have the line through Ben Mansour to Bougie if you have to move later. If you want to move. This is the time to do it, while we are still fairly strong and able to conduct a good fighting withdrawal.”
“Make that the order,” said von Arnim. We’ll give ground stubbornly, so Hitler can see we are still fighting. But I’m going to start pulling men back from those mountain passes and getting them to the rail lines. As for Algiers, we’ll hold it as long as possible with the 327th Infantry, and then wreck the place before we hand it to the British. I’m pulling Conrath’s troops out tonight. I need you to cover that flank for another day or two.”
“Good enough,” said Fischer. “We’ll hold.”
It was a wise decision, made by men who both knew what they were doing on the battlefield. At the moment, their forces were deployed in a large oval, with the west end being Algiers, and the right end M’sila. The north edge was the coast, the south the Atlas mountain passes where the 22nd Luftland and Kubler’s 98th Regiment were holding two other American infantry divisions at bay. The front line opposite the Americans stretched over 110 kilometers. If they pulled back to a front covering Constantine, they could cut that in half, putting many more troops on the line per kilometer, and having the rail line behind them.
So it wasn’t a battle of dash and maneuver that would give Patton his victory here, but one of sheer attrition, where he had been able to lean on his opponent and take him into the later rounds where he hoped to win on points. There were no knockdowns. The scorecards were very close, and most judges would see the fight as a draw. But when the final bell would sound, Patton would have the ground, his divisions battered and bruised, but still on their feet in the center of the ring. He could crow that he had beaten 10th Panzer, but Fischer, Conrath, Student and Kubler would all lead their forces east in good order.
“How about that,” said Patton when he made his report to Eisenhower. “We stopped 10th Panzer at M’sila! That was one of Rommel’s old divisions. Now, what I want to do next is get to that railhead at Batna, move east to Tebessa and take the whole Army into Tunisia from there. By God, Ike, I can cut right through to the coast and kick Rommel right in the ass!”
“Hold on, Georgie,” said Eisenhower. “We don’t even have Algiers yet, and it will be weeks before we can clear the ground from there to Batna. You did right by us at M’sila, but now I want you to regroup and bring up supplies before you go gallivanting off to Batna and Tebessa. The British have another division at sea from Spain, and Montgomery is transferring his headquarters to Algiers the moment we have the place.”
“Montgomery? Why he’ll take a month at Algiers before he decides to move east. Hell, I’m half way to Tunisia where I stand.”
“That may be so, but unless you want to walk there, with all your men, hold up until we can get fuel, supplies, and replacement tanks out there for you. What’s the score on that tank fight you had south of M’sila?”
“Our boys fought hard, but they were out gunned. The German tanks make ours look like toys. There aren’t many, but what they have outweighs our armor pound for pound in every way.”
“There’s another reason to hold your horses,” said Eisenhower. “I’ve got a big new shipment of the new M1A Shermans, enough to refit your armored divisions so you can put some teeth in them before you really have to push east again.”
“Good enough, Ike. I’ll reconnoiter to see what the Huns are up to out there, but you get me those tanks and I’ll go all the way to the coast, just like I said.”
Chapter 20
O’Connor’s 8th Army was not the force that Montgomery had commanded after his victory at El Alamein in the old history. Monty had seven infantry and three armored divisions at his disposal, but O’Connor would take only four infantry and two armored divisions into Tripolitania. He maintained the 1st South African in reserve at Benghazi.
Yet Montgomery’s advance had never been conducted with the whole mass of his substantial army. More often than not, he was operating with two to four divisions, and then rotating in fresh units to relieve forces used after a successful operation. And Monty’s advance was methodically planned. He would never move unless he had a precise amount of supply to support operations in his forward depots. Often, he would pause to reorganize and supply units, and to permit the necessary “dumping” as he called it.
The battle O’Connor had just fought to push Rommel out of his positions at Agheila and Mersa Brega was also an action Montgomery conducted, launched on December 11th in the old history. Then, Rommel had been extremely low on supply, his tanks thinned out to fewer than 100 operational vehicles, his own morale at an all-time low, to the point where he despaired and advised Hitler that North Africa could not be held. He had chafed against the Italians trying to keep him fighting in Tripolitania, and continually argued for withdrawals, first to the line at Buerat, then to the Tarhouna-Homs line, and finally to Mareth.
Monty had pursued him at his leisure, “dumping” supplies at a convenient site about half way between El Agheila and Sirte, dubbed Nofilia by the British, and An Nafaliyah to the locals. After Rommel retreated on December 13th, Monty waited just over one month, until January 15th, before testing Rommel’s defense at Buerat. In all that time, he was seizing forward airfields for the RAF, seeing to the expansion of port handling facilities at Benghazi, dumping supplies and fuel for a presumed ten-day advance to Tripoli, and cleaning up the mess at El Agheila by removing mines and wire
, and improving the roads. He dedicated an entire infantry division to this task alone. It was this meticulous attention to logistics that was the hallmark of his command style.
O’Connor’ situation was now quite different. To begin with, the Afrika Korps he was facing here was much better supplied. Rommel had been sitting at Mersa Brega for months, while the 8th Army took Benghazi, occupied Cyrenaica, received new divisions and tanks, and moved supplies up from Tobruk. He was well prepared when he launched his attack, but so was Rommel, and the mental condition of his opponent was also much stronger.
Rommel seemed to exhibit the mood swings of a manic depressive. He would be in the depths of despair, complaining about the Italians, the lack of tanks and fuel, the slow dismemberment of his once powerful force as units were sent west into Tunisia and Algeria. Then, when he learned he was to be given back his old 7th Panzer Division, his mood suddenly elevated into the “old Rommel,” as Kesselring put it. This was the Rommel that had first arrived at El Agheila over a year earlier, and the Rommel that had chased O’Connor all the way back to Tobruk, then drove him relentlessly towards Mersa Matruh—until Kinlan appeared on the scene like King Arthur’s lost knights returning in Britain’s hour of gravest need.
The British stopped Rommel at Tobruk, just barely, then launched Operation Crusader to push him back to Gazala. It was their final offensive, the Supercharge operation led by Kinlan’s Heavy Brigade, that had finally unhinged Rommel’s Gazala line and sent him back to where he had started. Now O’Connor believed his operation to take that bottleneck at Mersa Brega and El Agheila had been a great success, but he was wrong.
He wasn’t facing a defeated and demoralized Rommel, and a badly depleted Afrika Korps this time. After losing 10th Panzer and Goring’s troops, it was much weaker than it was at Gazala, but it had more than adequate supply when it pulled back at Rommel’s order, and more than adequate fuel to get it to the Buerat line. Rommel wasn’t pushed out of the bottleneck as O’Connor believed, he yielded the position deliberately to go seek better ground of his own choosing for a mobile battle. O’Connor was not facing an adversary that was beaten and demoralized as had Monty. He was now facing the Desert Fox, and was unaware of the peril that might lie ahead.
With the mentality of a hard driving cavalry officer, O’Connor came charging through the bottleneck into Tripolitania, thinking to harry and pursue his enemy as Rommel withdrew. Yet the Germans moved with speed and deliberation, a well-coordinated withdrawal. The two Italian Armored divisions had paid the price for that. Ariete and Littorio were both largely destroyed at El Agheila, with only scattered remnants being extricated to fall back on Sirte. Yet they covered the retreat long enough for Rommel to pull out all his good German divisions, and the “bad going” in the terrain to the south also slowed O’Connor’s enveloping move considerably. By the time the British pushed through, Rommel and his Afrika Korps were gone.
Major Popski was with a detachment of the LRDG, well out in front to look for the Germans. The tracks of their withdrawal were easy to follow but the enemy was never found. Their dust had long settled as they passed northwest, and Popski could feel trouble in his bones now. He had scouted up to Wadi Rakhiriyah, a perfect defensive site where he thought the Germans might have posted a delaying force. The low ground in the wadi was backed by higher stony hills to the west, perfect for defense.
“Well that’s a situation,” he said aloud to a Lt. Colonel John Richards. “This doesn’t sit well with me. They should be sitting on that position, but there’s not a whisper, not a man or a single rifle.”
“Rommel’s been beaten harder than we thought,” said Richards, but Popski shook his head.
“Not the way I see it. You don’t give up a position like this—unless you don’t need it. You see? These tracks lead northwest, and Jerry is well gone by now. He isn’t limping off to lick his wounds. This was a well-planned move, and they had the fuel to motor out of here with no trouble at all. I’ve a bad feeling about this. My guess is that we won’t find a German for another fifty kilometers. He’s headed for Buerat.”
“All the better,” said Richards. “Then we won’t have to fight our way up to Sirte. The ground is empty for the taking.”
“Right,” said Popski. “It’s as if Rommel has tied it off with a bow and gifted us with the whole lot. Welcome to Tripolitania. Well, we’d better be careful.”
“Yet the road is open,” said Roberts. “Surely we can tell Harding to bring up the 7th.”
“I suppose so,” said Popski. “But we better check it for mines first. If it’s really clear, they can swing up to Nofilia this way, only I think we’d better have a look farther north and west. Something smells fishy here. I’ll get on the radio to Reeves.”
That was the one bone Kinlan had left on the table when he took the Heavy Brigade to replenish at Tobruk. Reeves had already topped off, and he had asked the Brigadier if he might hang on with O’Connor and help scout the way around Marada for the planned envelopment of El Agheila.
“I’ll just take a single squadron,” he said. “That was all we had fuel for, and there’s no point burning it all up by driving back to Tobruk. Why not let me move forward with O’Connor?”
Reeves, and most of the other men in the Brigade, had finally settled into their role here, accepting the impossible fate that had befallen them. He was a soldier, and what better place to ply his craft, and live his soldier’s life, than right here, in the middle of the greatest war ever fought on earth. So gone was the shock and disbelief of those early weeks. Now he was all business.
For the most part, Popski’s unit was among the few British regulars of this era to operate directly with Kinlan’s men. The rest of the Brigade always operated as an independent unit, always in the deep southern wing of the Army, where Rommel would feel their shadow on his right shoulder every time he contemplated a move. In fact, few men had ever seen the interior of any of Kinlan’s vehicles, on Churchill’s specific order after he had glimpsed the digital wonders there in Siwa.
Permission was granted, and so Reeves took a small detachment from his 12th Royal Lancers, nine Scimitars, three Warrior AFVs with an assault squad in each. A pair of FVS 81mm Self-Propelled Mortars, and the icing on the cake was his wrangling away three of the five Challenger IIs that were assigned to his Lancers. “We’ll just make off with them,” he said. There wasn’t fuel enough for the other two, and they were scheduled for a maintenance check. Two of the Brigades few tank moving trucks were going to haul them back to Tobruk. So Reeves, with 1/12th Royal Lancers, was just two kilometers behind Popski, waiting for him to give the word to move his column up.
That was all that there would be of Kinlan’s shadow in this engagement. The rest of the Brigade was far away, and headed for a rendezvous south of Tobruk. If things went bad for O’Connor, they were over 500 kilometers away, and for the first time in many months, Rommel finally had a fair fight in front of him—a chance to make good on his promise to Hitler that he could beat the British 8th Army.
O’Connor was moving into Tripolitania, and feeling the same wind at his back that he had after soundly thrashing the Italians in 1940 and then racing all the way across Cyrenaica to Beda Fomm. This combination of circumstances, a strengthened Afrika Korps, a weakened 8th Army, a beaten German General looking to redeem himself, a victorious British General giving his horses the reins—it was all going to add up to the danger Popski could sense all around him now. The Major’s eyes were hard on the desert as he scanned the terrain ahead with his field glasses. This was too easy.
44th Home Counties Division was in the lead, having passed through both 50th Northumbrian and the 4th Indian Division after the successful breakthrough along the coast. By mid-day on the 3rd of October it moved through the coastal town of Bin Jawad, and was approaching the wadi that ran through Nofilia, some 8 miles inland, winding and twisting its way to the coast.
The division was a patchwork force, as its 131 Brigade had been detached to 7th Armored,
and its 133 Brigade had gone to Spain with the 10th Armored. This left only Whistler’s 132 Brigade, and to beef up the division, O’Connor had attached the two Free French Brigades in theater, and then added the independent 1st Tank Brigade. Their mission was to get to Nofilia and prepare the area to receive supplies for his new forward depot. The area was perfect for a support site, protected by a wadi to the west, well-watered, and with a small airstrip.
The division was advancing up the one main road that governed all movement in North Africa, the coastal Via Balbia. Montgomery once remarked that fighting and supplying the troops in North Africa was like advancing from London to Moscow on a single road. That was the same distance by land between Tunis and Alexandria, and the Via Balbia was the only good road. The inland roads were nothing more than well-worn tracks where vehicles had pushed their way through the imposing terrain, the paths of least resistance.
4th Indian was next in line on the Via Balbia, followed by the two divisions that had broken the Italian resistance along the coast, the 51st Highlanders and 50th Northumbrian. Both would need a little rest before moving up through the Marble Arch and making their entry on the new chess board that was now being set. As for the armored Divisions, O’Connor had his lighter 7th Armored on the leftmost inland flank. And the 1st Tank Division between their position and the Via Balbia, about 12 kilometers inland. 23rd Tank Brigade was in reserve following O’Connor’s headquarters.
* * *
For his part, Rommel had completed his final briefing the previous day. “Wadi Hiran,” he said, running his finger along the map. “It runs almost perpendicular to the coast, about 30 kilometers east of Sirte. That’s where we’ll stop their advance. General Lungerhausen, I’ll want you on the coast with your 160th Division, right astride the Via Balbia. General Marcks, your 90th Light will be inland at his shoulder, with your right flank a few kilometers beyond this feature, Bir Khalfiyah. The wadi meets another there, and covers your right. This road just beyond that point runs east to west, as you can see. That is where I will place General Bismarck with the 21st Panzer Division. That road is ideal. It allows Bismarck to keep his division in march column, but at the same time, that column covers the infantry defensive front perfectly.”
Tigers East (Kirov Series Book 25) Page 17