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.It would not be possible toexecute both plans simultaneously, so Kesselring ruled thatArnim s must come first, followed by Rommel s; Rommel woulduse both his own and Arnim s panzer forces.Arnim was still re-luctant, so Kesselring forced the two commanders to meet onneutral ground Þö the Luftwaffe command post at Rhennouch Þöon February 9.It was eighteen years since Rommel had last met Arnim.Both had been army captains.He had not liked him then, and hedisliked him now.Kesselring dictated terms to them: We aregoing to go all out for the total destruction of the Americans.They have pulled back most of their troops to Sbeitla andKasserine.We must exploit the situation, and strike fast. Arnim proposed to launch his attack on Sidi Bou Zid earlyon the twelfth.Rommel replied: I can then start my attack on368 the trail of the foxGafsa two days later, before the enemy can get away.What countsisn t any ground we gain but the damage we inflict on the en-emy. Kesselring, as usual, was quite excited about their prospects: I think that after Gafsa we should thrust into Algeria, he said, to destroy still more American forces. Rommel was not so opti-mistic.Kesselring suggested that Rommel had only a small-scaleattack in mind.He asked Rommel s doctor how soon he ought tobe sent on his cure, and Horster replied: I suggest that he departon about February twentieth. Kesselring urged Arnim to be pa-tient until then about taking over the promised Army Groupcommand.Kesselring said with a chuckle, Let s give Rommel thisone last chance of glory before he gets out of Africa. At 8:00 a.m.on February 12 the band of the Eighth PanzerRegiment struck up outside Rommel s trailer.It was two years tothe day since Rommel had set foot in Africa.Not many of his Af-ricans had survived the two years.Of the 1,000 men who hadarrived with the Eighth Machine Gun Battalion, for instance,only four had stayed the entire course.At midday all the officerswho had come over with Rommel in February 1941 and were stillfighting under his command Þö nineteen men in all Þö came for alittle reunion.Rommel was lean and sun-tanned, but his face wasfurrowed with worry, and his eyes were moist as the old memorieswere refreshed and the band softly played the march that thisepic two-year struggle had inspired, We are the men of the Af-rika Korps. None of them would forget how the rain poured in Tunisia.The rains delayed Arnim s move against Sidi Bou Zid for twodays.Meanwhile, on February 13, Rommel drove up to attend acommanders conference called by General Ziegler on an airfieldsouth of Sfax.Here he met Baron Fritz von Broich, the generalcommanding the Tenth Panzer Division, and Colonel Hans-369 david irvingGeorg Hildebrandt, commander of the Twenty-first Panzer.(Hildebrandt had caustically dismissed Rommel to a Rommel aidewith these words: All he knows is just one word, and he bawls itall the time: A greifen [attack]! Þö and he mimicked Rommel sSwabian accent.) Ziegler would be controlling 140 tanks in the at-tack.Rommel felt very much out of things. We don t have muchto do with it, he commented with noticeable bitterness to Lucieafter Ziegler s attack began.Ziegler s attack on Sidi Bou Zid, code-named SpringBreeze, began at 6:00 a.m.on February 14, with powerful Luft-waffe support.By 5:00 p.m., the enemy s Combat Command A was in rout.Eisenhower was taken completely by surprise by thisGerman attack Þö in fact, he himself had been in this very villageonly a few hours before.From the Ultra intercepts of Rommel sand Arnim s code signals the enemy had somehow deduced thatthis attack was only a feint, to camouflage a much bigger offensivestarting farther north.So the enemy were caught on the wrongfoot, their reserves miles away and still not released.As the Ameri-can troops fell back in disorder on Sbeitla, the next township,they left the battlefield strewn with wreckage Þö forty-four bigtanks, fifty-nine half-tracks and twenty-six guns.Still unconvinced, the American Combat Command C counterattacked the next day with all the subtlety of a goadedbull.For thirteen miles, in a dead straight line across open coun-try, they advanced on Sidi Bou Zid.In parade-ground formation,this mass of modern hardware rolled forward, making no attemptto push out forward reconnaissance.As they came within range ofthe German guns, a tornado of shells swept through them.A pin-cer attack by Ziegler s Tenth and Twenty-first Panzer divisionscompleted the ambush.By dusk, the Americans were again inrout, having lost another fifty-four tanks, fifty-seven half-tracksand twenty-nine guns.Eisenhower was furious at the faulty intel-370 the trail of the foxligence that had led to this calamity, and demanded his intelli-gence officer s recall.At a private dinner party in Algiers somedays later, he explained to his Allied superiors that he had notsent down reserves because the Ultra intercepts had suggestedthat this was to be a purely diversionary attack, in advance of areal one elsewhere. So the Ultra proved to be wrong, noted hisaide, Harry C.Butcher, in the diary he kept for Eisenhower.Hewent on to speculate (incorrectly): That makes me wonder if wehave been listening to something the Germans have purposelybeen using. Where was Rommel on that historic day of battle? The dia-ries show that he was visiting the Mareth line in southern Tunisia.His preoccupation with this position had not receded.When theunexpected news came that afternoon that the panicking Ameri-cans had actually pulled out of Gafsa, Rommel s first recordedreaction was open relief that his own scheduled attack on Gafsawas thereby made superfluous.But then the next day, February 16, a sensational changecame over Rommel.He had set out at 7:30 a.m.to see Gafsa him-self, and the evocative sight of roads choked with his own ad-vancing tanks, trucks, captured jeeps and wrecked Americanequipment stirred feelings in him that he had not felt for manymonths.As his car forced a way through the mobs of grinningArabs openly hauling away their loot plundered from Gafsa sabandoned villas, Rommel began intently studying his battlemaps.Suppose he and Ziegler could keep the Americans on therun, and capture the passes through the western chain of moun-tains too? Then they could threaten the entire Anglo-Americanposition in Tunisia from the rear! It was a chance of glory indeed.Arnim had none of Rommel s verve or temperament.Hehad no intention of promoting a big operation.Rommel pro-posed to Arnim that Ziegler s two panzer divisions start marching371 david irvingat dusk and capture Sbeitla that same night, but he got no satis-factory reply from Arnim.Meanwhile he drove on into Gafsa itself.Once more he wasin the limelight, and he relished it.The Rommel diary relates, The Americans have blown up their big ammunition dumpwithout prior warning to the townspeople.Over thirty houseshave collapsed; so far the corpses of thirty-four Arab men,women and children have been recovered, eighty more are miss-ing.The Arabs crowd around the C in C s car and celebrate theirliberation by the Germans with wild whoops of delight.Theyshout two names, over and over again: Hitler and Rommel. Ideas were taking shape in his mind.In a violent hailstormhe drove back, and put through an urgent telephone call toArnim s headquarters.Arnim s staff assured him they had nowdecided to start an attack on Sbeitla, which was an ancient Romansettlement at a crossroads on a remote and arid plain
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