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HOW the E I G H T H ARM Y. DID I T

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HOW the E I G H T H ARM Y. DID I T HOW THE E I G H T H ARM y. DID I T The Story if the Mareth Victory GRANT PARR HE Eighth Army was used as a stalk. war was spelled in English, fought in khaki. ing horse in the final battle of Africa; With equipment built in the United Tits Enfidaville attacks pinned down States; Britain, Canada, India, and Aus- large forces of the enemy until the real tralia, men from the four corners of the drive could go in elsewhere. Yet Eighth globe fought as a unit, a well-oiled ma- Army units were in on the kill. The chine which swept the Axis out of half of Eleventh Hussars were among the first North Africa. It was no fair-weather into Tunis, and the Seventh Armored Di- machine either. At Mareth it was stuck vision-the famous Desert Rats-took the when the mistake of two field officers surrender of the Fifteenth Panzer Divi- made it possible for the Germans to hold sion; up a well-planned frontal thrust. Yet The Eighth Army's story is significant without a pause the Allied battering ram to-day because it stands as irrefutable proof extricated itself and struck again in an- that democratic nations can create fight- other place. This article is an account of ing organizations superior to any the Axis what I saw as a correspondent for the has produced. The Eighth Army was a National Broadcasting Company with an small army of course; butit was the spirit- Eighth Army that was victory bound and ual first-born of the forces that welded the would not be denied. victorious Anglo-American army of North Africa. And what we have done can be After the repulse at Mareth, 'General done again on a much larger scale. We Bernard Montgomery faced a situation have experienced officers and an experi- that might have stumped lesser men. enced nucleus of men. We have the Many thoroughly competent generals equipment. By the time this is published would have settled back to reorganize, these other, greater armies may already be thus throwing the African timetable off on the move. schedule. Others would have hammered I want to tell the story of the Eighth blindly at the barrier, succeeded at a high Army as I saw it roIling on in the last great price in lives, and lost equipment or failed days of its African conquest-at the end of once more. the longest advance in the history of war- Montgomery did not hesitate. His fare. Our imaginations have been too right-hand blow had not broken the much peopled with the blitzkrieg feats of enemy's jaw, therefore he would hit with gray-clad hordes. Montgomery's lightning his left. But war being no Marquis of 472 HARPER'S MAGAZINE Queensberry affair Monty determined to Now Montgomery determined to make weight that left with steel knuckles. Freyberg's outflanking operation the main Marshal Erwin Rommel faced a far show. He ordered the First Armored more difficult dilemma. He was fighting Division to swing around the Gebel Mat- the entire Mareth operation under the mata and join Freyberg, and sent the constant threat of an American advance Fourth Indian Division into Hallouf pass from Maknassy which might have cut off opposite Medinine in order to shorten his entire force. (The Americans were communications lines to the New Zealand not strong enough to do this, but the Ger- forces and provide a secondary outflank- mans could scarcely have been sure of it.) ing movement. He was also aware of a threat to his imme- The First Armored Division didn't leave diate flank at the gap south of El Hamma the Mareth area until Wednesday, March between the east-west Tebaga ridge 21st, the day the Nazis used the last-gasp (parallel to and just south of the Chott strength of their Fifteenth Panzer Division Djerid) and the Gebel Melab at the ex- to force the Fiftieth Division to pull back treme north of the ridge of hills called across the Wadi Zigzau in front of Ma- Matmata which protected the inland side reth. The trek that ensued made the old of the Mareth line. He dared not with- covered-wagon migrations seem picayune. draw his Tenth Panzer Division from the From start to finish the desert tracks (there American front for use against Mont- was never a decent road and the vehicles gomery. He dared not concentrate his usually made their own trails) looked like two other weakened armored units (the great winding snakes as the endless stream Fifteenth and Twenty-first) either at of trucks came on. Mareth or the Melab- Tebaga gap, lest the The tanks had rushed up first to be ready Eighth Army strike the unguarded alter- for battle when called. The trucks forgot nate. dispersal for the sake of speed and the Holding the long British line curved enemy air forces turned out to be so busy around Medinine and abutting the Mareth elsewhere that this risk proved justified. position, Montgomery had the Fiftieth or I made the journey through the desert in Northumbrian Division, the Fourth Indian the foremost part of the transport section Division, the Fifty-first or Highland Divi- and I have never spent two more unpleas- sion, the Tenth Corps, consisting mainly ant days. The Eighth Army's trucks of the First Armored Division, and finally were by and large rickety affairs, having on the extreme left flank, opposite Medi- crossed myriad miles of desert in more nine, certain Guards regiments. than one campaign. Precious water Before the attack on Mareth was boiled out of our radiators and we were launched, Monty had sent the New Zea- limited to half a gallon per man per day land brigades and the Eighth Armored for washing and drinking. In actual Brigade around the hills of the German practice we didn't wash. "Shan" Sedg- salient and up through the desert to strike wick of the New Tork Times said, "Euro- at the Melab-Tebaga gap. The New pean peasants get so dirty that eventually Zealanders had moved only by night and they become clean, like a tree." That dispersed their forces in the desert by day, was the state we attempted to gain, but but on the day of the Mareth attack an when we finally reached water at El enemy plane flew close overhead. Gen- Hamma we were still dirty. The white eral Bernard Freyberg, oft-wounded, gal- dust was the worst. Men who rode in lant New Zealand veteran, believed his jeeps, trucks, or tanks got their faces pow- column to have been observed and pro- dered with it until they looked like weird ceeded to move both by day and by night. clowns. There was no water to wash it By the time the Northumbrian men had off with so they just retained their strange driven a salient into the Mareth defenses, complexion. the New Zealanders had stormed and While the Mareth battle was swinging gained vantage points on either side of the in favor of the Nazis, the New Zealanders Melab- Tebaga gap on the vulnerable attacked the center or" the German de- flank of Rommel's salient. fenses at "the gap" and drove in a wedge. HOW THE EIGHTH ARMY DID IT 473 TRIPOLITANIA General Map of Tunisian Coast, with Insert Map Showing Eighth Army Thrusts Through and Around Mareth Line 474 HARPER'S MAGAZINE The Kiwis' next move was a one-two aid of glasses, distinguish the forward punch of their own, first to the left and surge of the tanks. They went up over then to the right. The initial drive in the the hills at the end of the plain toward the center had taken the Kiwis through mine- twisting white scar on the horizon that fields that the Nazis had occupied for two was an old Roman wall and marked the months. The "old one-two" put the first enemy defenses. Line by line the En Zeds (for N.Z.) onto the hills on either tanks crossed the horizon and went on. side. But one high hill in front still ~ave The infantry followed but these I could the Nazis an observation post which en- not see. Then a friend shouted and abled them to shell the New Zealanders pointed to the left. unmercifully. The Maoris-native Poly- Strung out along the plain and just ap- nesian-Melanesian New Zealanders-got proaching the first hill crests was a sight the job of taking this observation point. calling to mind the Biblical connotations These little brown warriors hate the of the word host. In the midst of a pall of Germans and love the bayonet. In the dust rumbled thousands of vehicles of last war at Gallipoli they are said to have every description-tanks, Bren carriers, fought uphill with bayonets alone, and armored cars, jeeps, troop-transporters, because they were short and stocky they gun lorries and limbers, gasoline trucks, tossed skewered Turks back over their infantry-bearing trucks. Inexorably the shoulders and fought on up. The Ger- host rumbled forward; it was literally mans never bring things to such a pass if hours before the vast parade had moved they can help it. Soon the Maoris had past our vantage point. this observation point and the Kiwi line As reconstructed from the account of was straight and tenable. Then General General Freyberg himself, the attack Freyberg brought up his artillery and hid looked something like this to the enemy. his tanks in the wadis. The stage was set Waiting in his defensive trenches about for battle.
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