The Piston

Monty sat down and wrote to his men:

"You have given our families at home, and in fact the whole world, good news and plenty of it every day. . . .

"I doubt if our empire has ever possessed such a magnificent fighting machine as the Eighth Army; you made its name a household word all over the world.

" I thank each of you for what you have done.

"I am very proud of my Eighth Army.

"Let us make the enemy face up to and endure a first-class Dunkirk on the beaches of Tunis. The triumphant cry now is: Forward to Tunis! Drive the enemy into the sea."

The Finish? When General Sir Bernard L. Montgomery wrote these words, the men of whom he was so justly proud were busily engaged in driving Rommel into his last North African refuge. Rommel's main forces were already streaming through Enfidaville (see map), out of the flat plain and into the fortress hills. The battle of central Tunisia was virtually finished and won. The Eighth Army had traveled nearly 150 miles in a week.

TIME Correspondent Jack Belden, sheltered one afternoon behind a small ridge with three British generals and five brigadiers, heard the officers congratulate each other and say: "He's finished." "And," added Correspondent Belden, "it begins to look as if they are right."

If they were right, if the beginning of Rommel's end had indeed come, it was thanks largely to General Montgomery and the Eighth Army. They had so far borne much the heaviest burden in Tunisia. The British, French and U.S. troops on Rommel's flank had not been able to do much yet. They and the sea had served well as the walls of a kind of cylinder. The Eighth Army had been the piston. And if Rommel was now getting compressed beyond repair, it was because the Eighth Army had done such a splendid job of crushing his rear guard at the Wadi el Akarit.

Another Wadi. The Wadi el Akarit was the strong natural position at which Rommel chose to challenge the Eighth Army's passage through the Gabes bottleneck (see map). The position was compact--only about twelve miles across. It consisted of the shallow gully of the Wadi itself and, behind it, two hills called Djebel Fatnassa and Djebel Roumana, 800 and 400 feet high respectively.

After its drive outflanking the Mareth Line, the Eighth Army reorganized with extraordinary speed. Rommel evidently expected them to rest longer than they did. They surprised him.

In the dark of the moon one night, just after midnight, a force of Gurkhas moved stealthily forward toward Djebel Fatnassa. Gurkhas are dark little men from Nepal who take to slopes like goats.

There is a saying that the only thing which tires a Gurkha is walking along a flat place. They went up Djebel Fatnassa with their wicked kukris, long curved blades sharpened on the inner edge, at the ready. In Nepal they use kukris to cut their enemies' heads off. At Djebel Fatnassa they reached their objectives with hardly a sound; dying Italians made the only noises.

At 4 a.m. a louder noise came. It was an artillery barrage--the heaviest since El Alamein. It concentrated on Djebel Roumana, and when it had walked back & forth across the hill for a couple of hours, British infantry rose up from the wild barley growing in the sand and stormed the height.

The two djebels were taken. Between them lay a hollow with a huge, V-shaped anti-tank ditch and behind the ditch a nest of 88-mm. guns. The enemy had dug their ditch well, using pneumatic drills to get deep into the rocky subsurface. A British battalion was sent in to clean out that pocket of resistance. It was mean work, but they did it.

Late in the day the Germans fiercely counterattacked the two hills. Later still, at dusk, they sent over the remnants of the Luftwaffe. Then the rear guard fled.

Another Chase. From that moment the task was pursuit and capture. "On a slight ridge overlooking the battlefield," wrote Correspondent Belden, "I heard a voice shout: 'Look, prisoners, thousands of them.' Down below me, out of the smoke veiling scattered olive trees, I saw a black mass of figures advancing. A Britisher with bayonet over his shoulder, a wide grin on his face, headed the column of 2,000 prisoners. The Italians wore non descript dress: some blue, some grey, some brown, some in knickers, some in shorts, some in long pants, one without any pants. At the end of the column were about 50 Germans, well dressed, grim and dour, as unhappy about being captured as the Italians were happy." In the next few days the Eighth Army captured about the equivalent of a division, mostly Italians.

The pursuit went fast. Merely throwing out patrols to make contact with U.S. troops near El Guettar and later near Maknassy, the Eighth Army pushed through Mahares, through Sfax, into Sousse, and to the very edge of the hill country.

Another Test. As Rommel's main force wriggled into the rough, well-prepared terrain of the Bizerte-Tunis area the Eighth Army could well afford to be jubilant. It had once again outmaneuvered a resilient, valiant enemy. But the men had yet to prove that Rommel was broken for good.

Rommel was now retiring into country beautifully adapted for siege, long prepared for just that. He was retiring into country alien both to his own and to Montgomery's men, who were desert fighters, not mountaineers. And he was retiring with his back to the wall of Europe. His men would fight fiercely here. Instead of another Dunkirk the British might find another Sevastopol as the Germans drew back on Tunis and Bizerte.

The Eighth Army would have still another, still a tougher, chance to prove itself the most magnificent fighting machine the British empire had ever boasted. And other, less hardened Allied troops would have a chance to taste magnificence.

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