BATTLE OF AFRICA: Carthage Again

Exactly 339 days after the U.S. declaration of war on Germany, U.S. and German land troops met in battle for the first time in World War II. The place was the oak groves and citrus valleys of Tunisia, once the breadbasket of Carthage, where Scipio in the Battle of Zama finally destroyed Carthage’s power.

News accounts were unable to keep pace with the Anglo-American invasion that took French Morocco and Algeria in 76 hours—and moved into Tunisia in 76 more. An attack and quick counterattack near Bizerte was the first clash of arms.

The Power. Heading General Dwight Eisenhower’s “precision offensive” was tight-lipped Lieut. General Kenneth Arthur Noel Anderson, commanding the British First Army of vengeful veterans of Flanders and Dunkirk. Second in command was Major General Charles Ryder, commanding auxiliary U.S. assault troops and motorized infantry. R.A.F. Spitfires, equipped with a tank-busting cannon, and Brigadier General James Doolittle’s planes covered the advance in the air. Offshore were units of the British Fleet.

New thousands of U.S. troops landed along the 1,500-mile Moroccan-Algerian coastline. They picked up the cry: “Let’s head east!” “East” meant Tunisia first, and after that a juncture with the British Eighth Army for the final mop-up somewhere in Libya of General Rommel’s bedraggled Afrika Korps. Five or six fresh Italian divisions apparently are also intact and ready for battle somewhere in the Tripoli-Bengazi area. As long as the Axis was in Tunis, the way to Rommel’s forces was barred.

The Prelude. The first blow at Tunisia was struck by twin-engined bombers soaring over “Death Alley” from Malta. On the same day that Eisenhower announced the capitulation of Morocco and Algeria the bombers destroyed 19 planes and damaged 19 others on the el-Aouina airfield outside Tunis. The Nazis, for once having to worry about too little and too late, poured additional planes into the French Protectorate from bases in Sardinia and Sicily. German paratroops captured and held the airfield after French scattered garrisons under the leadership of the ubiquitous General Henri Giraud fired on the Nazis and Italians. Drawing on “flying Panzer divisions,” supposedly held for an invasion of Britain, Hitler air-ferried twelve-and 15-ton tanks to protect the approaches to Bizerte harbor. Italian marines were reported landed by sea. Axis subs swarmed like sharks off the coasts.

Best estimates gave the Germans upwards of 10,000 men in Tunisia at first. They were chiefly flyers and technicians. The downing in three days of 20 transport planes hindered but did not break up a feverish Nazi shuttle service. Allied land troops in Morocco and Algeria greatly outnumbered those of the Axis, but only part of them were able to take the road to Tunis. And there was a possibility that one of the great air battles of the war would develop if Hitler gambled 1,000 or more of his best flyers in a desperate bid to keep a toe hold on North Africa.

The Preparation. Nazi dive-bombers, which claimed a heavy toll of shipping in the bight of Bougie, harried the advance of British and U.S. troops. U.S. motorized units raced along the coast and joined the amphibious forces of the British First Army when it landed on the beach at Bone, 60 miles from the border. In three columns the united armies marched over the border at dawn Nov. 14 and began to make their way over the sizable mountains that divide Tunis from Algeria. Ahead of them, Allied paratroops, which left Britain only four days before, floated out of the sky to assist the French troops already fighting in attempts to capture or neutralize the major Tunisian air bases.

From the border at least one column followed the Medjerda valley toward the harbor of Bizerte, where the enemy was first met. Another may have headed straight east to Tunis; another may have branched off to Gafsa and started the long trek through mid-Tunisia toward the Libyan border.

The Prize. A land of deserts, mountains and rich coastal valleys, Tunisia (pop. 2,608,313) has been a world trouble spot since antiquity. Here fabled Dido was consumed in flames. Offshore Ulysses’ sailors were lured by the lotus-eaters. From Carthage, whose ruins lie near the present city of Tunis, Hannibal’s legions moved against the Roman Empire. It was Cato the Censor who urged on the Romans in the Punic wars with his famous slogan: “Delenda Est Carthago” (Carthage must be destroyed).

Successively conquered by Justinian’s great General Belisarius, by Don John of Austria, by Charles V of Spain, by Mohammedans, Turks and Barbary Coast pirates, Tunisia at last was grabbed by France in 1881 as the cornerstone of her burgeoning African empire. But not for her dates and olives have modern nations since sought Tunisia. Mussolini, yowling for the “return of Tunisia” (on the basis of a large Italian colony and a claim 1,500 years old), has wanted it to control the Mediterranean. Only 88 miles separate Tunisia from Sicily. A “second Gibraltar,” it also has, in Bizerte, one of the world’s great harbors. Behind an outside harbor through an inlet is a saltwater lake capable of holding the fleets of Europe.

To protect her African keystone, France strongly fortified the hills around Bizerte harbor. But the Allied forces are approaching Bizerte, fortified for a sea attack, by a backdoor land route. To face Italian aggression from Libya, France built the Mareth (“Little Maginot”) Line of pillboxes and sunken cement forts in the hills at the eastern border. In hostile hands these fortifications would not be an impossible obstacle to the Allies. The Germans and Italians dismantled many of the fortifications after the French armistice in 1940; and the guns on the Mareth Line are set to point east.

The Possibilities. It was too early this week to gauge the quick-flowing battle scene. Dourly General Anderson announced: “This is no picnic.” Hitler has a big job if he is to shuttle enough troops to Tunis and Bizerte to fight more than a delaying action. The Allies also have a big job to get there fast enough in effective force. Since Hitler’s job is apparently much bigger, the odds favored comparatively speedy Allied occupation. Once that is accomplished, the need for a continued “precision offensive” will continue. The battle for Tunisia is only the prelude to bigger things. Despite Cato and centuries of slumber, Carthage, long ago destroyed, may yet serve again as a base for operations against Rome.