IV Allied armored forces rout German panzers

Allied armored forces rout German panzers
March 6, 1943
....In the Tunisian fighting the armored divisions of both sides played a considerable part, and their support was indispensable to secure the full exploitation of any break through of opposing forces. On March 6, the enemy made a heavy assault on British positions in Southern Tunisia with infantry and tanks. It failed signally. The enemy forces were compelled to withdraw towards the hills to the north of Medenine, and in one day's fighting thirty-three Axis tanks were destroyed without a single British tank being lost. Two days later enemy tanks captured by the British totalled fifty. At the end of February the important Kasserine Pass, which had seen much bitter fighting when it had been taken from the Allies by a very heavy Panzer attack a week earlier, was successfully cleared of the enemy and was once again in Allied hands. American and British infantry, supported by tanks, forced this enemy withdrawal. Among the prisoners who surrendered were many Italians. As the Eighth Army advanced and the number of enemy prisoners increased, the ratio of captured Italians to Germans was, on many occasions, found to be six to one, showing that the Germans had no compunction in deserting the soldiers of Italy, then their ally. The pictures on these pages show some incidents during this stage of the fighting in Tunisia: first, British tank crews mounting before an advance against enemy positions; second, hundreds of war-weary Italian soldiers surrendering to the Eighth Army.