In the Muck

Like a covey of pigeons fluttering into an alley, a squadron of U.S. light bombers swooped down through the North African mountains. The field on which it lighted was bare of anything that would identify it as an airdrome. But trucks began to arrive with equipment. Men swarmed over the plateau. Within 24 hours of their landing, the bombers were off on their first mission.

Last week the field was dotted with pup tents and tin huts, swarming with men. The Luftwaffe paid it the respect of a daily call. From it, U.S. bombers had already made 41 raids.

From such bases, often deep in mud, lashed by biting winds and rain, Allied air forces fought for control of the North African skies against Axis planes based more solidly at Tunis and Bizerte. On one red-letter day last week Flying Fortresses and P-38s destroyed 23 Axis planes, damaged 34 others, lost only two of their own planes.

The main object of the Allies was to destroy Axis ports of entry along the Mediterranean. They attacked from the east as well as the west. As long ago as the middle of December, the Allied High Command decided that the Germans intended to make their last stand for North Africa in Tunisia. Allied strategists believed that Rommel would continue to retreat, delaying the British Eighth Army all he could, but keeping his battered troops intact. In Tunisia he would combine forces with General Walther Nehring and present a hard, solid front.

So heavy bombers of the R.A.F. and the U.S. Ninth Air Force, based somewhere in Libya, flew to Sfax and Sousse. It was days before a momentarily confused enemy, with his alarm nets spread to the north and west, realized whence came these new onslaughts (see p. 26). Malta-based bombers also helped. At week's end dispatches reported La Goulette, port of Tunis, knocked out, Bizerte, Sfax and Sousse rapidly being rendered unusable.

At Gabes. On the wet and soggy earth of North Africa the preliminaries of a final and decisive campaign were being more laboriously worked out.

As thick and treacherous as the Tunisian mud was the political situation (see p. 32). A constant, silent threat was the Rif territory of Spanish Morocco, lying squarely behind the Allied lines and along the Straits of Gibraltar. Estimates of the number of Spanish troops there ran from 100,000 to 200,000. Among them were efficient fighting men--the Spanish Foreign Legion and tough Moors. Short of heavy equipment, they were well enough armed to hack an attenuated supply line. As long as Fascist Premier Franco ran Spain, sullen, uncertain Spanish Morocco would pin down a certain number of watchful Allied troops.

On the front, in Tunisia's muck, the opposing armies parried and feinted, sliced at one another's arteries of supply, maneuvered for strategic positions along indeterminate fronts. For the Allies it had become a big, grim undertaking. How big and grim correspondents were just beginning to be allowed to hint at. For one thing, the U.S. troops were green men who would need months of experience before they were as battlewise as the German veterans who opposed them. In the northeast corner of Tunisia the fighting was at a virtual stalemate. Across the waist, U.S. troops had advanced to a point 40 miles from Gabes, Tunisia's southernmost port. The advance was a threat to Axis strategy. If the Allies reached Gabes, thus cutting the Axis corridor, they might succeed in stopping the juncture of Nehring and Rommel.

Wadi to Wadi. As for Rommel, he continued west, hopping from wadi to wadi along the serrated Mediterranean coast. At week's end he was less than 200 miles east of Tripoli, at Wadi Zemzem. The main British forces were 50 miles east, moving with care and caution.

So far Rommel's strategy of delay and retreat had worked out. He had kept his forces intact and General Sir Bernard Law Montgomery's pursuit became more difficult with every mile he moved west. Rommel was falling back on strength, Montgomery was moving away from it. There were fighter bases along the Tripolitanian coast, but Rommel plowed them up as he retreated and sowed the furrows with mines. Montgomery had to build and equip fields for fighter planes as he moved along. The weather was on the Axis side. No one knew how long it would be before the sun would come out of the foul sky and bake the battlefields. The rainy season lasts through February, sometimes into April. The climactic conflict in ancient and bloody North Africa might not be joined for weeks, possibly months.

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