Graveyard

Rommel hoped he might throw his old enemy off balance. In the fine, slanting rain of an early Tunisian morning he sent the tanks charging south toward the little town of Medinine, which the Eighth Army had occupied. From the foothills of the Matmata Mountains, nest of the Mareth Line fortifications, Rommel's cannon laid down a barrage to cover the advance.

British artillery was in position before Medinine. Some of their gun emplacements were on two hillocks, dubbed Elephant Hill and Edinburgh Castle, which stuck up like two pimples in the plain. Others were on the ridges behind, where TIME'S Correspondent Jack Belden also stood and watched one phase of one day's battle. Belden wrote in his notebook:

11 a.m.--Germans land shells atop Edinburgh Castle. Dark, black streamers of smoke suddenly appear in the sky over us.

The Germans are using air-burst antipersonnel shells.

11:30--There is a buzzing above our heads. Someone shouts: "They're ours," and there are 20 Kittyhawks and Spitfires above us. Eight German planes are seen flying above our left flank.

1:20--Guns on our side are so far silent. Then the right opens up. The Germans reply with shells which explode near the highway, up which ammunition trucks are unperturbedly traveling.

1:25--A loud roaring noise of planes in a dive. Someone shouts: "Those aren't ours." Out of the sun across the battlefield sweep three planes toward Edinburgh Castle. A loud series of crumps rends the air, huge clouds of blackish-grey smoke spring up at the foot of Edinburgh. Machine gunners on Sherman tanks let loose at the planes. Startled birds scatter in all directions.

1 :30--German shells are growing nearer. One burst has landed just to the left of a battery of ours, another one clatters down near some bushes where we know a battery is. In a cloud of smoke our gunners seem to have disappeared, but in a few minutes there is a flash of fire from the bushes and we know our gunners are still there.

Valley of Death. In a dried-up river gulch yellow-haired Sergeant Ivor Andrews watched 17 German tanks file up a slope, let the first four go by towards another gun crew, knocked out the next three. When Belden visited the battlefield after it was all over, he counted 52 German tanks left on the arid, rock-strewn plain between the Matmata Mountains and the Mediterranean Sea. Some were blackened from fire, some were still splotched with green camouflage and black crosses. Turrets were torn off, fronts were blown in. They were casualties of Rommel's most earnest attempt to hit back at the British Eighth Army since the Eighth had chased him out of Egypt.

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