American Signal Intelligence in Northwest Africa and Western Europe

Chapter 4. The March Offensives

Expectations

The enemy thinned out his positions in central Tunisia in order to attack in the north at the beginning of March 1943. On 2 March, 18 Army Group passed on a report from the Allied defenders that twenty-five Axis tanks were lying abandoned in front of their positions after a halfhearted attack by two battalions from the 47th Grenadier Regiment and one from Regiment Barenthin. Another Axis drive along the road through Sedjenane was only partly successful and quite costly. On 3 March these attacks were renewed without understandable objectives and were interpreted as possibly "the execution of rigid orders no longer applicable to the present situation."^[37] Of thirty tanks immobilized at one point, and ...