AFRICAN CAMPAIGN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 April 1943, Page 3

AFRICAN CAMPAIGN

COMPLETION OF FIRST PHASE SURVEY BY COMMANDERS. PRAISE FOR AMERICAN & FRENCH TROOPS. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, April 17. The Commander-in Chief in the field in Tunisia, General Alexander, in a special message to Major-General Patton, commander of the American ground forces in Tunisia, said: ‘ The first phase of our offensive operations has been brought to a successful conclusion. The main task which I gave to the Second United States Corps was to capture and secure Gafsa as an administrative base for the Eighth Army, and, secondly, to threaten Rommel’s rear in the Gafsa-Maknassi area in order to draw his reserves from the Eighth Army front and thereby help the break-through on the Mareth Line. This task has been most successfully done, and it has been a battle-winning factor in the recent fighting.” General Alexander thanked General Patton and his troops for their part in the great victory, and added, “hard fighting still lies ahead before we throw the common enemy out of North Africa, but the united efforts of the three allies will make the result certain. Good luck to you all.” The Allied Commander-in-Chief in North Africa, General Eisenhower, in a review of the campaign, revealed that since the battle of Mareth 470 enemy aircraft have been destroyed in the air for the loss of 157 Allied planes, not counting the scores of enemy machines that have been destroyed or damaged on the ground. He also said that Admiral Cunningham, the naval Commander-In-Chief in the Mediterranean, told him recently that over 1,000,000 tons of enemy shipping had been sunk by submarines and that about half of the enemy supply ships going'to North Africa had been destroyed. CLIMAX OF BATTLE. Now said General Eisenhower, the Allied forces under General Alexander, Air Chief Marshal Tedder and Air Marshal Coningham, were making ready for the final phrase. They had reached the climax of the battle. He described the use by General Alexander of the Second United States Corps between Gafsa and Fondouk as a clear example of perfect co-ordina-tion. The United States Corps had pinned down about 35,000 of the enemy in the Gafsa-Maknassi sector, and in this area 4600 prisoners had been taken, 673 vehicles destroyed, 69 tanks damaged or destroyed, and 150 field-guns captured. The United States casualties were 903 killed, 859 missing, and 3610 wounded. Their operations were successfully executed completely in accordance with the scheme laid down. The Americans were improving daily in quality and quantity. General Eisenhower referred with great appreciation to the French, who, he said, had fought magnificiently and proved themselves the equals of any army in the world. They had had to defend practically the entire Tunisian dorsal range, holding a front of 80 or 100 miles. It seemed a hopeless job, but they did it. When the campaign began the Allied armies in the North and south had had no communication between them, but with the co-ordination of the three forces improving daily this difficulty had ben overcome and the forces fighting in North Africa today formed one combatant body. A DECISION EXPLAINED. Explaining the original decision not to land at ports so far east as Bone and Bizerta, General Eisenhower said that the experience of the British Navy in escorting convoys was that without air support from land the Allied shipping could not use ports so near the Sicilian Narrows. Not knowing what military dispositions would be made against them, the Allies when they landed had not the necessary equipment to undertake a rapid advance in force against the Germans who landed in Tunisia, Hense, the British First Army had a most difficult task, but its cleverly-calculated boldness told. With the French by their side, they pushed forward, using every possible

means of transport—cars, aeroplanes, boats, lorries and trains. By their bold stroke and splendid determination they were able to hold the enemy on the Tunisian front and —what was most important of all —the airfields so necessary for future operations were seized. “We did not want to repeat what happened in Egypt when, after the initial victory, our long lines of communication told upon us and we had to build up all over again,” General Eisenhower said. Three chief difficulties lay now before the Allies in Tunisia which were likely to make the advance laborious and hard, he continued. Even with the air supperiority, low-level bombing would be difficult because the Germans had concentrated a large number of light anti-aircraft guns in the northeast corner of Tunisia. Secondly, the enemy troops holding the bridge head were making great use of the landmine, not merely as an obstacle to delay ’ our approach but definitely as a weapon.