Reinforced American
Infantry Versus German Armor - 23 March
General Allen that night had the 26th Combat Team advancing
along the Gumtree road, while the 1st and 2d Battalions, 18th Infantry, were
engaged, as they had been since the preceding afternoon, in driving out Italian
forces northeast of Hill 772 on Djebel Berda, thus widening the front
considerably. The trains of the 2d Battalion, 18th Infantry, barely reached the
cover of the foothills, after crossing in darkness from the northern side of
the valley, when sounds of motors to the northeast were followed by an eruption
of tracer fire and the echoing rumble of guns. At 0500, while darkness was
still complete, an enemy motorized force was reconnoitering by fire the
southern slopes of Djebel el Mcheltat.
Daylight revealed the presence of the 10th Panzer Division,
which was methodically sweeping the foothills and the lower ground north of the
road before undertaking bolder measures. The 3d Battalions of both the 18th and
16th Infantry were under direct attack. A spearhead moving up the valley was
engaged by the 601st Tank Destroyer Battalion until about 0700. The main body
of the enemy force was in full view of American observers on heights above the
valley on either side, and from the German Africa Corps' command post on Hill
369.
At first the battle ran entirely in favor of the attacking
Germans despite determined and courageous opposition. Their tanks and
self-propelled guns, interspersed with infantry in carriers, rolled westward in
a hollow square formation and at a slow but steady pace. Behind them, a column
of trucks drove to a predetermined point at the western end of Djebel el
Mcheltat and unloaded more infantry, which followed closely the armored
rectangle ahead of them. Then the mass of the enemy separated into three
prongs. One group turned northwest among the foothills east of Hill 336
overrunning the 32d Field Artillery and part of the 5th Field Artillery
Battalions; another continued along the road; and the third, and much the
largest, force tried to sweep the hills and northward along the edge of the
Chott el Guettar.
German tank-infantry teams overran the American artillery
and infantry positions east of Hill 336 in engagements which brought some
hand-to-hand encounter, and heavy American losses. A curving belt of mines
extended from Choett el Guettar across the road and along the Keddab wadi to the
southeastern base of Hill 336. There the tide of battle changed. American
artillery and the tank destroyers of the 601st and 899th Tank Destroyer
Battalions knocked out nearly thirty enemy tanks, and the minefield stopped
eight more. Eventually, the morning attack was contained. The 10th Panzer
Division pulled back a few miles to the east and prepared for a second attack.
During this withdrawal enemy artillery and aviation harassed the American
defenders, and Allied air units struck back repeatedly. The Germans towed their
disabled tanks to a prepared maintenance point not far from where their
infantry had first detrucked. During this interlude, and running a gantlet of
enemy shells and Stukas, nineteen American jeeps rushed back for ammunition,
all but six returning safely in time to oppose the next assault. Elements of
the 16th Infantry and the 1st Ranger Battalion were put into the line along the
Keddab wadi. Headquarters, 1st Division, was ready for the second attack (1645
hours) and aware of the enemy forces to be committed.
Preceded by a German air strike, and on the signal of a
siren, the ground troops of the enemy attacked once more toward El Guettar. At
1830, word came that they were still advancing, with thirty-eight tanks in one
group, but barely fifteen minutes later, an exultant report arrived from the
18th Combat Team:
Enemy attacked as
scheduled, preceded by dive-bombers which did little damage. Troops started to
appear from all directions, mostly from tanks. Hit Anti-Tank Company and 3rd
Battalion. Our artillery crucified them with high explosive shells and they
were falling like flies. Tanks seem to be moving to the rear; those that could
move. 1st Ranger Battalion is moving to protect the flank of the 3rd Battalion,
which was practically surrounded. The 3rd Battalion and the Rangers drove them
off and the 1st Battalion crucified them.
Thus at the close of 23 March, a reinforced American
infantry division, well supported by Allied aviation, mainly by their artillery
had stopped the bulk of an enemy armored division. Kesselring's report to the
OKW acknowledged substantial tank losses in the morning attack at the Keddab
wadi; it called the efforts of the 601st and 899th Tank Battalions a
counterattack with tanks against the German north wing which had been repulsed,
and it attributed the failure of the afternoon attack to superior Allied forces
and a threatened penetration through the Italian-held positions on the northern
edge of Djebel Berda. Although the armored counterattacks of 23 March were
beaten off, the enemy by no means lost his determination to maintain an
aggressive defense of the routes of Allied approach to the rear of Italian
First Army. He might not succeed in plunging through the Americans with his
armor, but he held strong defensive positions and could nibble incessantly with
infantry and artillery, and with tanks used as artillery, at the American
positions in the hills north and south of the Gabès and Gumtree roads. On 24
March he made some progress in each sector, especially in the high ground on
opposite sides of the Gabès road, and on 25 March, he succeeded in recapturing
from the 1st and 2d Battalions, 18th Infantry, their most exposed position on
one of the northeastern buttresses of Djebel Berda. When a German patrol reached
the bare summit of Hill 772 there, mortar fire brought it scampering down. But
the two battalions of the 18th Infantry, even with the 1st Ranger Battalion,
managed only to hold their position; they could not extend it without larger
reinforcements, perhaps another entire regiment. With that much strength, they
believed that they could take all of Djebel Berda and the hills east of it, and
thus open the road to Gabès for American armor. Had such a regiment been sent,
or had the two battalions simply remained in possession, the Germans might not
have been able to withstand the 9th Infantry Division's efforts later to drive
them off. But during the night of 25-26 March the battalions were ordered to
withdraw through the 1st Ranger Battalion. Colonel Darby's Rangers, with a
purely defensive role, held a south flank position in the foothills west of
Djebel Berda for the next two days
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