To carry out this operation the 21st Panzer Division which was refitting at Mahares was placed under command of 5th Panzer Army and despatched to Paid. The battle plan was simple. Four battle groups would take part. One, with a holding role would attack from the east and under cover of this assault a second group would scale the height of Djebel Kralif. A third force would hold the Rebaou pass while a fourth column cut through the Maizila pass to block any flow of reinforcements to the Paid garrison and also to attack those troops from the west. On 30 January the battle groups struck and the storm troops on the heights of Djebel Kralif descended upon the northern flank of the French positions.

By nightfall it was over and the pass had been seized, but the Americans were not content to let so tactically important a feature be lost so lightly and 1st Armoured Division sent forward two armoured columns to attack the Rebaou and the Paid passes. The group which struck at the Rebaou pass penetrated some distance inside it but was then repelled. A column of infantry, artillery, and tanks commanded by Colonel Stark which charged into the Paid pass struck against experienced panzer men who had had time to prepare their defences.

An artillery barrage halted the American advance and then the Stukas went in to break up the cohesion. One company of 1st Armoured Regiment was drawn to within range of an anti-tank gun line and lost 9 tanks. The United States forces withdrew but came in again on 2 February against the Rebaou pass and this time using infantry ahead of the armour. But this assault, too, failed and the combat command went over to the defence in that sector. On other sectors, too, the American advance had halted and the troops of 1st Armoured Division began to move back upon Gafsa.

Plans had been made to attack Pichon and these were quite far advanced when intelligence reports indicated a strong build-up of American forces in the Sheitla-Tebessa-Sidi bou Zid sectors. This could only mean that an attack would be launched against the German troops in those sectors and that this would probably be made in conjunction with an expected British offensive at Mareth.

Arnim then decided to attack the American force in the Sbeitla sector before it had grown too large and if this move met with success then to exploit it by rolling up the Allied front from south to north. If he could compel the Allies to evacuate Medjez el Bab then the strategic aims for which the Germans had been striving since November and of which operation Olivenernte had been the most recent plan, might yet be achieved.

There were certain temporary difficulties. Fischer, an experienced and forceful tank commander, was killed in action while on a reconnaissance and his death resulted in a general reshuffle of senior posts. The loss of Fischer meant that the new commander would have to 'work' himself into the post and in view of the shortage of time von Arnim called off that attack and con­centrated instead upon the objective of Sidi bou Zid.

Fischer's death and the difficulties which this caused can serve to illustrate at this point one weakness of the German command structure in Tunisia. From the first days there had been no adequate staff organisation and no staff officers at all. Most divisions reaching Africa were not complete formations but usually individual regiments, and, of course, were without divisional hier­archy. It can be appreciated that staff officers, even of quite junior rank were seized upon to fill empty staff appointments at fairly senior levels. Thus there was no Corps structure because there were insufficient numbers of efficiently trained officers and 5th Panzer Army formed ad hoc groupings and then called these Corps, although they seldom had the strength of even a division on the continental mainland. Only the length of front which such units had to hold, the tasks given them to perform, and the requirements of command structure led to these groupings being called Corps.

  The Tunisian Bridgehead

In the last days of January to the accompaniment of icy winds and in bitter cold the advanced guards and then the main of Panzer Army Africa crossed the frontier into Tunisia and by 12 February, the second anniversary of the German arrival in the African theatre of operations, those Axis positions still on the soil of Tripolitania were also withdrawn into the bridgehead area. Here in this fertile country the desert veterans of the years of 1941 and 1942 returned to a European-type warfare in which the infantry arm carried the main burden of battle.

The 1st German/Italian Panzer Army was ordered to stand on a position at Mareth which had first been constructed and then destroyed by the French. At the high echelons of command in Rome and Berlin it was perhaps believed that the Mareth line was strong and well fortified; but this was not the case. The whole position was badly sited and quite-weak. Immediately in front of the main defensive position a ridge dominated the Axis positions and to garrison this took men from the battle line. In the south the flank was wide open and the gap between Djebel Ksour and the coast required a strong garrison to protect the over-long western-flank against an outflanking move­ment. Then too, the Allied presence in Gafsa required that intensive and heavy patrols be maintained in the area of the Djerid Schott.The French had constructed this weak line against the Italians in Tripoli and had left the western flank open for it would have been from Algeria and Tunisia that their reserves would have come. But to the Axis commanders the passes leading from the interior of Tunisia and debouching on to the coastal plains were a constant source of worry because it would be out of these passes that the attack might come which would sever 5th Panzer Army from 1st German/ Italian Army. Every one of these passes lay behind the troops who were defending the Mareth position, and they would be a threat until the Enfida-ville line was taken up. But that is to anticipate because the Mareth Line was ordered to be held to the last.

The whole line was a geographical and not a military position and certainly not one which any soldier would have chosen to defend nor risked men trying to hold.

Rommel was disappointed but not surprised to find that the arms and fuel had not arrived as Hitler had promised they would. So little had been received that there was no barbed wire and only a small number of anti-tank mines. Once again his army would have to make do: the men, turning to obsolete and, in some cases, obsolescent weapons, and depending upon the fighting spirit of those whose time spent in the front line was now being measured in weeks and not in days.

Rommel deployed the Italian XX Corps and 90th Light Division to hold the main battle line and placed in reserve the 15th Panzer and 90th (Africa) Divisions. The east—west passes at Kieddache and Halouf were blocked by 164th Division. In support of the thin infantry and panzer line there were 65 German and 340 Italian field guns. There were also 36 batteries of Italian anti-aircraft guns; 18 light and 18 heavy, while among the 12 batteries of German 8.8cm flak were 2 batteries fitted out with guns of the new, improved 1941 pattern. Another defensive grouping was made up from 10 batteries from 19th Flak Division.

There were, however, grave and serious shortages of infantry. The 90th Light Division had had such losses that regiments had been reduced to an average strength of 350 bayonets and the whole division was almost com­pletely defenceless against armoured attack for most of its anti-tank guns had been lost and not replaced.

The total artillery fire-power of 164th Infantry Division was a single battery of field guns, for it was anticipated that the German infantry would be able to sustain a defence in the mountains with only minimum support. The most dangerous military risks were being taken and there were sectors which were covered only by patrols.