Battle of El Guettar

Background

By March 1943 the Axis position in Tunisia was being squeezed from two sides. In the west, the Americans of II Corps, mauled at Kasserine Pass in February, were licking their wounds. In the south, Montgomery's Eighth Army was closing on the Mareth Line, which it attacked on 19 March. Rommel left Tunisia on 9 March, leaving Hans-Jürgen von Arnim in command. Von Arnim shared Rommel's low opinion of American troops and expected a spoiling attack to clear them from the Eastern Dorsals.

Patton had taken over II Corps on 6 March, replacing Lloyd Fredendall, and meant to threaten the right rear of the Axis forces at Mareth. On 17 March the 1st Infantry Division took Gafsa as a forward supply base. The next day Darby's 1st Ranger Battalion occupied El Guettar, and the Italian defenders withdrew into the hills overlooking the town, blocking the pass towards Gabès. On the night of 20 March the Rangers raided an Italian position and took 200 prisoners.

The Axis answer was to hit the Americans before they could advance further. The Axis had only one mobile division in the area, the 10th Panzer, and it assembled during the night of 22–23 March near Djebel Ben Kheïr, east of El Hafay. CDB90 describes the battle as a single day's engagement under the campaign TUNISIA 1943, EL GUETTAR (392), 23 March, and the page follows that scope; the longer struggle for Hills 369 and 772 that followed is covered briefly under 'aftermath'.

The armies

The attacker was Fritz von Broich's 10th Panzer Division, understrength, and the only mobile formation the Axis could throw against the American approach to Gabès. About 50 tanks, according to one account, entered the valley on the morning of 23 March, supported by motorised infantry in halftracks and motorcycle sidecars. In the afternoon a second assault included two panzer grenadier battalions, a motorcycle battalion, two panzer battalions and an artillery battalion. The Italian Centauro Armoured Division held the northern edge of Djebel Berda, and Bersaglieri troops took part in the fighting around the 18th Infantry.

The defender was Terry Allen's 1st Infantry Division, with the 3rd Battalions of the 16th and 18th Infantry directly in the path of the German attack, the 1st Ranger Battalion and elements of the 16th Infantry along the Keddab wadi, and the 601st and 899th Tank Destroyer Battalions with M10s. American divisional artillery included the 5th and 32nd Field Artillery Battalions. Anti-tank guns and minefields supplemented the tank destroyers. The Army Air Forces flew 123 bomber sorties in support. Over all of it stood Patton, who had taken command of II Corps on 6 March.

The battle

The night before, 20–22 March. The Rangers' raid on 20 March had taken 200 Italian prisoners, and the 1st Division's casualties to 21 March were light, with 14 killed and 41 wounded. On 21 and 22 March the Italians made no resolute counterattack, and on the night of 22–23 March American units drove Italian forces back north-east of Hill 772, while the 10th Panzer was moving into position to the east.

The German attack, morning of 23 March. The 10th Panzer Division attacked along the Gabès–Gafsa road at about 03:00, aiming north-west at the 1st Division's southern flank and rear, and at 05:00 a motorised force probed the southern slopes of Djebel el Mcheltat. At daylight the division swept the foothills and split into three prongs. According to one account about 50 tanks emerged from the pass at 06:00 and motorised infantry charged the hilltop infantry in an attempt to reach the American artillery. The attack lost momentum at a minefield, American artillery and anti-tank guns opened fire and the 601st Tank Destroyer Battalion engaged the spearhead until about 07:00. Within the first hour 30 tanks had been destroyed, the Wikipedia article says, and by 09:00 the Germans pulled back. Howe's official history counts nearly 30 tanks knocked out by artillery and tank destroyers, with another eight stopped by mines. During the attack German tanks and self-propelled guns, with Bersaglieri, overran the 32nd and part of the 5th Field Artillery Battalions near Lieutenant Colonel Robert York's 1st Battalion, 18th Infantry.

The second attack, afternoon. The division withdrew eastwards to prepare another attack, which was ready at 16:45. At 18:30 an American report spoke of the enemy advancing with 'thirty-eight tanks in one group'. This attack too was disrupted by American artillery, with heavy losses; the following chapter of the official history adds that Allied air groups helped throw back the counterattack. The rest of the 10th Panzer dug in to the east or retreated to Gabès. Kesselring acknowledged substantial tank losses in the morning and blamed the afternoon failure partly on a threatened American penetration through the Italian positions on Djebel Berda. Howe's judgement is that a reinforced infantry division, heavily supported by artillery and aircraft, stopped the bulk of an armoured division.

The cost. The 601st Tank Destroyer Battalion lost 24 of its guns, two of them recoverable, leaving nine, and the 899th lost seven M10s. Nineteen jeeps went back for ammunition under fire, and all but six returned.

Aftermath

The defence of 23 March ended the Axis attempt to push the Americans out of the El Guettar valley, but it did not end the fighting. On 28 March the 39th Infantry's night attack on the main Axis line was spotted by the Italians on Hill 290 and dispersed. On 30 March Benson Force attacked Hill 369, ran into mines and anti-tank fire and lost five tanks and a rifle company of the 47th Infantry, which was forced to surrender; Howe gives the company's loss as 232 enlisted men and 10 officers. The 1st and 9th Divisions attacked again on 31 March and were driven back by an Italian counterattack by 12:45, with the loss of nine tanks and two tank destroyers. By 3 April the 1st Division had cleared Hill 369, but the battle for Hill 772 continued and the lines became largely static.

The breakthrough came elsewhere. The British Eighth Army broke the Axis line at Wadi Akarit on 6 April, and on 7 April Benson Force raced down the abandoned El Guettar–Gabès road and met the leading elements of the Eighth Army at 17:00. Tunis fell to the Allies in early May. Wikipedia calls the battle indecisive and the first in which US forces defeated experienced Italian and German tank units; the Italian High Command's contemporary claim of 40 tanks destroyed and 170 Allied troops captured is reported without confirmation.

Wargaming it

El Guettar is a compact tactical scenario, a morning and an afternoon, at company and platoon level (one stand per tank platoon, tank-destroyer platoon or rifle platoon, 100 metres to the hex), with the artillery as the key asset. The terrain is open, rolling desert ringed by hills: the Americans hold the heights and the German tanks cross a long, flat approach under observed fire.

The defender's real weapons are indirect fire, minefields and tank destroyers, and a scenario should let the American player use them well: pre-registered artillery targets, a minefield that the German player discovers only on entering it, and tank destroyers that can be put in the wrong place. For the attacker, the interesting decision is how to split three prongs and when to call off the attack; the second assault in the afternoon is a separate game in its own right, with the Italian flank on Djebel Berda as the weak point.

The forces are hard to balance, because the numbers are uncertain: about 50 German tanks against, in one account, 31 American M10s. The what-ifs are limited: a German attack that finds the minefield earlier, or an American artillery battalion overrun completely. A scenario variant could continue into 30–31 March, with American attacks on Hill 369 against Italian defenders, for a very different, attacker-versus-prepared-defence game.

Maps and pictures