Behind the Front

While the fighting in rainswept Tunisia made news last week, the battle which will decide the issue was being fought behind the lines. It was the struggle to get in reinforcements and supplies.

The Axis' problem was simple compared to the Allies' (see map). Axis ships from Italy ran the Royal Navy's gantlet by night and air transports few back & forth from Sicily over a shuttle that took little more than an hour's flying time. German and Italian troops have arrived since Dec. 1 at the estimated rate of 2,400 a day, with tiptop equipment and plenty of it.

At least 90 Axis ships have been sunk in the central Mediterranean during the last four months: many more have probably been sunk. Royal Navy submarines sank the majority of them. Allied fighters have harassed the air transport lines. Allied bombers from Malta and the African mainland have incessantly bombed Axis ports, transshipment points and railroads in Italy, Sicily and on the receiving end in Tunisia. Since they lost Tripoli, Rommel's forces in southern Tunisia have been supplied by the overworked coastal railroad between Bizerte and Gabes, and this too has often been bombed. But Allied attacks have neither closed the ports nor cut the coastal railways and air and sea lanes; it has only made Axis supply expensive.

Supplies for the South. To sustain themselves the Allies have had to move supplies under heavy convoy across thousands of miles of ocean, and then over hundreds of miles of muddy mountain highways and desert trails.

Supplies for the Eighth Army on the southern front have to be shipped from Britain, the U.S. and Canada around the tip of South Africa, through the Red Sea and Suez to Alexandria (see map). A desert railroad and coastal shipping, now almost free of Axis air attack in the eastern Mediterranean, move material from Alexandria to Bengasi. At Bengasi supplies are picked up and transported by a fast fleet of more than 100,000 motor lorries,* which move some 2,400 tons a day along a 600-mile ribbon of road across Libya to Tripoli. To keep the lorries running is in itself a major problem. Every day 2,000 tires must be replaced.

As fast as they can the British are clearing the wrecks out of Tripoli's harbor, and rebuilding docks destroyed by Allied bombers and Axis sabotage. When Tripoli is in full operation as a port, the overtaxed highway will be relieved by Mediterranean convoys from Alexandria, and the stream of supply will become a river. The first sign that this has been accomplished will come when the Eighth Army attacks in force.

Supplies for the North. From primary bases in the United Kingdom and the U.S. it is 1,400-3,700 miles to west North African ports. It is from there that the central and northern Tunisian fronts are fed. Supplies are landed chiefly at Casablanca on the Atlantic and carried 1,100 miles overland, or at Algiers on the Mediterranean and hauled 450 miles overland.

In the first days of the invasion Allied engineers struggled with antiquated French locomotives which huffed & puffed along the dilapidated, single-track railway which starts at Casablanca, touches Algiers and runs on to Tunis. With U.S. rolling stock, U.S. railroad men were able to double the road's capacity.

Supplementary carriers are trucks, thousands of which were landed safely a fortnight ago, and transport planes operating from west-coast bases.

Supplies for All Fronts. Toughest problem is fuel, all of which has to be imported--coal from England, gasoline from the U.S.

Britons have learned to husband all supplies, which U.S. soldiers are still careless about. Inexperienced officers send truck convoys close to the front lines in daylight, lose them in strafing attacks by the Luftwaffe. Doughboys use gasoline to dry-clean their pants. A recent U.S. Headquarters order clamped down on gasoline waste, tabooed idling motors, pouring gas without funnels, etc. Before that wasteful U.S. troops had been using two or three times as much gas daily as the British.

The Allied armies have never lacked supplies. Huge reserves are piled in west North Africa. The difficulty has been in getting materiel to the right place at the right time. The Allies so far have won the battle of supply. Their lines are longer, the traffic is much slower, but it moves in volume and with scarcely any interruption. But unless they maintain a margin of superiority and halt the increase of Axis strength, the campaign will not be won in time for an invasion of Southern Europe this year.

Most of which are Canadian-made, not U.S. (TIME, Feb. 1).

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