Word: mareth
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...Tunisia, now had room to move around. More important to them, they had removed any threat to their flank when they turned south to face their old enemy, Montgomery. It would be some time before Montgomery's Eighth, slowly advancing around the ends of the Mareth Line, and Eisenhower's central Tunisian forces could join hands...
Rommel was improving a position in which he already held all the advantage. He and Colonel General Jürgin von Arnim, commander of the Axis forces in the north, occupied a rim of commanding heights from Mateur south to the Mareth Line. Behind them was the flat coastal plain over which they could move rapidly against any vulnerable Allied point. General Dwight Eisenhower was forced to operate across a muddy terrain at the tough end of supply lines some 400 miles long...
...Axis' southern position was guarded by the pillbox fortifications of the Mareth Line, built by the French atop high, naturally defensible escarpments. But the south appeared to be a likelier route for an Allied plunge into the coastal flatlands. The weather was wet, but the footing was better over sandy soil. And in the Allies' southern sector were the battle-smart veterans of the seasoned Eighth Army. With a strong show of artillery and tanks, Rommel tried to delay them. They edged...
...been shattered." But Montgomery did not destroy Rommel, as in his supreme confidence he had announced three months ago he was about to do. Rommel probably saved some 63,000 of his soldiers. In Tunisia, Rommel can expect some surcease behind the deep, scattered pillbox defenses of the Mareth Line. There is little chance that the Allies can prevent his making a junction with an estimated 70,000 troops of Colonel General Jürgen von Arnim, who recently succeeded Nehring. The knot of Axis strength will be hard to unravel, especially with Montgomery's old enemy...
There he could make a stand behind the Mareth Line, the "Little Maginot" of pillboxes and cement forts strung along the hills in southern Tunisia from the Gulf of Gabès 20 miles inland. There were already reports of Axis troops from Tripolitania hastening into Tunisia. There was even a report (from Berlin) that Rommel himself had left Tripolitania to go "elsewhere on another job." The report obviously was put out to save the fox's face, now that he had lost his tail. But it might be true. Rommel might have gone to Tunisia...