BATTLE OF MARETH LINE

Chronicle (Levin), 10 April 1947, Page 5

BATTLE OF MARETH LINE

(Special rorresprmdent.) r Am.;i G

ROMMEL MADE ONE CRUCIAL MISTAKE

The full story of the Battle of Mareth has yet to be tohi, says a Dail. Telegraph correspondent after revisit. ing the battlefiehl on the fourth anui versary of that fainous action. Field Marshal Montgomery 's plan to break the Mareth Line, he says, has always been regarded as a double ope.ratio.n-— a right jab by the 50th Division at the seaward end and a sweeping left hook at the narrow E1 Hannna g'ap by tlnNew Zealanders. It has been general lv assumed that eaeh attack was intended from tiooutset to be a niajor operation. Bui was it so? he asks. Did the right jab and left hook elaim equal importanee in the niind of Field Marshal Mont-. gomery 1 The correspondent visited the poin" where the 5()th Division launched it~. fronlal attack on the Wadi Zigzaou. Inside the brief bridgehead and from the winding track he counted nine Bri tish tanks scattered over the slopes. "In the cold winter sunlight the silence and tension pressed upon us like a solid weight," he said. "1 have never known such a timeless sense of the past, The place itself seenied to be holding its breath waiting for the guns to speak again. " With one exception all the tanks i saw in the bridgehead were Valentines. Did not this suggest tliat General Mont gomery 's right jab was, in/the lasl analysis, no more than a feint designed to distract Rommel's attention from the left hook? If so it succeeded fo we know tlie Dennan armour was di verted to put its teeth into a counter attack. Is it possible that Field Marshal Montgomorv, knowing the in lierent strength of the Mareth defences, has de'termined from the outset tc tlirow his inain weight inlo tlie out flanking attack?" Aslcing to what extpnt this was anticipated by 1'onnnel, the correspond ent said he drove to the narrow valle\ of E1 Hatuma. " Kxcept for an oeca sional knocked-out gun, tank or vehicle., there were few sigus of battle until we reached the (terman minelields. Yet it would appear that Komnud had madc oue crucial mistake. He had, in i'act, fortilied the K1 Hatnnia gap but not the nearest approach from tlie coastal plain where lie knew that the Kighth Arms was deployed. This was an extraordinarv oversight. "The route followed by the New Zealanders, - armour and lorried ini'antry, runs west from Ihe main road and through the village of Ivsar K! Hallour. About two and a-half miles fartlier on is the narrow delile leading across tlie watershed of the Matmata Mountains. It is the key to the wide plain beyond and likewise the key to • VJ1 Hamma where the plain is ' wgisted by higher ground. The deiile is eom 1 ■ manded by French casemates served b\ , subterranean galleries. It was mined bv the Germans but never manned, "It is diflicult to aecount for this misealculation or mistake, and also the reason whv Rommel coneentrated most of his force in the coastal plgin to tln1 neglect of the defences in the Matmata Mountains. "Whatever the full story of Mareth reveals, and which is expected to be told when Field Marshal Montgomeiy pftblishes his book, 'The Eighth Ann.v: E1 Alamein to the Eiver Sangro'," tlie correspondent says, "one point is assured- Rommel conducted a ipasterly retrfeat from a critical position but al! his skill and resource eould not concqal the fact that he had been outmanoeuvred, out-fought and out51 generalled. ' '