In the Dust of the Khamsin

General Sir Bernard Law Montgomery had been thrown back at the northern end of the Mareth Line. In a 15-mile-wide gap between the Matmata Mountains and the seashore, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel had stopped him cold and he had backed up, leaving the plain strewn with British dead around the hell of the Wadi Zigzau (see p. 17). It appeared that Montgomery had been stalled. It only appeared so.

Far to the south of the Mareth Line, British and Fighting French units had made a wide sweep and were clawing their way towards El Hamma. Rommel sent German armor to bend back this threatening arm. Allied armor and an "unprecedented" onslaught of aerial power met the German column. So terrific was the air attack that even veteran Germans wilted. Only 20 miles from Gabes, the column drove on, threatening to close Rommel's corridor of retreat (see map). At that juncture, Montgomery shifted and struck again at the Mareth Line.

This time he sent the veteran Eighth Army against the very face of the Matmatas. The khamsin, the hot African wind, filled the air with the sands of the Sahara. Through the thick of it roared his planes. The mountains thundered and echoed with his artillery barrage. His infantrymen, like the point of a crowbar, jabbed into Rommel's suddenly faltering defenses. Montgomery's armor poured through, levering the crack until it was a wide and shattered hole. The Mareth Line, southern bulwark of the whole Axis position in Tunisia, collapsed. This week Rommel retreated.

The treacherous sink of Chott el-Fedjedj hemmed Rommel's inland flank. Just north of the chott were the U.S. troops of Lieut. General George S. Patton Jr., threatening to drive down out of the hills, cut across to the seacoast and block the German retreat. At Bou Hamran they were only 55 miles from the coast; in their position east of Maknassy, only 29.

All week, while Rommel had his head and shoulders in the Mareth Line, he had tried to kick the U.S. forces away from his rear. There in the mountains with the strange names (Djebel Berda, Djebel Chemsi, Djebel en Nedjilet) American troops had fought savagely and well to keep unrelenting pressure on the enemy. The fighting on Djebel el Kreroua was typical.

Djebel el Kreroua. The hill was Patton's most advanced position at one point on the Gafsa-Gabes road. U.S. troops who had fought without sleep for 48 hours seized it, then barely had time to scratch out shallow foxholes before 88-mm. cannon began blasting at them from German tanks in the pass below and from artillery in overlooking hills. The U.S. troops were armed only with rifles and machine guns, with which they rattled away at enemy infantry trying to follow the Axis tanks through the valley. Cut off by the German cannonading, the Americans began to run short of ammunition, water, food.

Sergeant Salvatore di Santis, ex-Brooklyn truck driver, was ordered to take four jeeps and go for supplies. He might have chosen a roundabout and fairly safe route. According to TIME Correspondent Charles Wertenbaker: "He drove straight across the plain within 300 yards of two German tanks, one of which put a shell so close that he had to straddle the hole in the road, and through a field of U.S. artillery fire to a supply depot six miles away. The time: 18 minutes. 'I felt kinda tense,' said Sergeant di Santis."

Superior weight drove the U.S. troops from the hill. Wertenbaker described the last stand of Company G.: "[They] had been on Djebel el Kreroua for four days and nights when the German infantry attacked just after midnight of the fourth day. The first they knew of the attack was a voice saying in good English, 'I want to see Sergeant Le Bruce.' They must have picked up his name from the wireless. Then the Germans were swarming all over the rocky knoll, coming in squads of four--a man in front with a machine gun or automatic pistol, two behind with grenades and the last man bearing ammunition. They were shouting something that sounded like 'Heil Hans,' and, according to one soldier who understood German: 'Show no mercy--kill all.' They took no prisoners. Every one of the survivors of Company G was wounded. I talked to them the next day under the palm trees of a cool oasis. They talked mostly of going back 'to settle things with those bastards.' "

In the mountains north of this confused scene of retreat and attack, other troops of Patton's made a 20-mile march through the mists, fell upon a surprised Axis force, seized Fondouk and extended yet another arm toward Rommel's rear. On the coastal side of the hills which flank Tunisia's 300-mile-long coastal plain, the troops at

Fondouk were only 20 miles from the Moslem holy city of Kairouan (more importantly, an Axis air base), and 55 miles from the port of Sousse.

In the extreme north, the British divisions of the First Army menaced the army of Rommel's colleague, General Juergin von Arnim, who guarded Tunis and Bizerte. For weeks the British had parried Arnim's thrusts, kept him contained. Now they switched to more aggressive tactics, began to punch determinedly against Arnim's defenses.

To Tunis. Rommel was in the toughest spot of his whole long north African adventure. But. even with the relentless Eighth Army sweeping through Gabes and El Hamma, pursuing the remnants of what had been a proud army of 80,000 in the south, he was not yet licked. In the rest of Tunisia were probably 170,000 more Axis troops. Last week's bitter fighting was only Scene 1 of the last act. Rommel might try to wheel in his retreat, smash against Patton, break through in the same area in which he once before made a successful jab, and roll up the flank of the British in the north. Or he could try to withdraw along the coastal corridor, unite with Arnim and there in the stronghold of the northern corner make a last stand.

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