New Zealand Division:
Fall of Tunisia
by Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
July 2023

Following the loss of the Mareth Line, Gen. Giovanni Messe of the Italian First Army pulled his weakened divisions back to the Wadi Akarit, a dry riverbed leading from the rough Tunisian mountains to the Gulf of Gabes. With the American II Corps and British First Army pressing into his rear areas, Messe occupied a vulnerable position, but the Supreme Command in Rome ordered him to stop his retreat here. The wadi provided a barrier against tanks, and some salt marshes also inhibited Allied movement.

Three Allied divisions would make a frontal assault against the wadi, backed by heavy artillery support. First Armoured and 2nd New Zealand Divisions would exploit their breakthrough. The attack went forward on 6 April 1943 very successfully, as the depleted Italian divisions holding the line had lost much of their wepoanry and their will to fight, though a battalion of the San Marco Marine Regiment fought fiercely to hold its part of the line.

Messe ignored orders from Rome to fight on and pulled back to Enfidaville some 150 kilometers to the north, greatly reducing the Axis front lines but assuring that Tunisia would not be held for long. The New Zealanders set out in pursuit, taking huge numbers of prisoners and vast stocks of weapons and supplies. On the 8th, their Divisional Cavalry captured the hill at Kat Zbara which provoked a strong German response including Tiger tanks.

The pursuit continued, with the Italian divisions moving north and the Germans taking over rear-guard duties. The New Zealanders continued to pick up prisoners, noting that the Germans were considerably better-clothed and -fed than the Italians they took. Even Gen. Alberto Mannerini, the tough leader of the Sahara Group, fell into their hands.

Yet resistance continued if the pursuers came too close to the pursued, and the New Zealand truck-borne infantry had to keep their anti-tank and artillery support, the so-called “gun groups,” close by the repel the panzers when they turned to fight. Most of the other Allied divisions still faced stout resistance, but the New Zealanders apparently did not press the retreating Axis hard enough to provoke strong resistance. Even so, occasional rearguards put up a stout fight if the Kiwis threatened to overtake the retreating units.

Italian anti-tank gunners in Tunisia. 31 March 1943.

On 13 April the New Zealand Divisional Cavalry rolled up to the Axis defenses around Enfidaville, soon followed by the rest of the division. Messe had chosen a spot where the mountains of the Djebel Zaghouan came close to the sea at the Gulf of Hammamet, and the desert terrain gave way to the dry hills of north-east Tunisia. It was also the final defensive barrier before the urban area around Tunis and Bizerte; when the Allies breached this line, the campaign in North Africa would be as good as over.

The New Zealand 5 Brigade tried to outflank the Axis position, but the brigade commander, Sir Howard Kippenberger, decided the defenses were too extensive to be overlapped by his lone brigade. The entire division would be required, along with artillery support to help pin the defenders in place. Both brigades resumed the advance on the 14th, making some progress against very light German opposition, but by the end of the day resistance had stiffened and Eighth Army planned a more extensive attack as part of a larger final offensive meant to wipe out the Axis presence in Tunisia.

The New Zealanders did not initially have a major role in Eighth Army’s plans for this final assault. While resistance was crumbling, the Allied command expected the remaining troops to fight hard to secure their retreat out of Africa. Liquidating this final position would entail heavy fighting and severe casualties.

On 14 April, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill asked the New Zealand government’s permission to use the division in the upcoming invasion of Sicily, planned for July. Prime Minister Peter Fraser demurred, saying that he could not authorize the deployment without a secret session of parliament. Already, censors were reporting war-weariness in letters sent home, and this would turn to outright mutiny later in the year. Churchill left the matter unresolved for the moment, but the next day the New Zealand division suddenly was thrust into the forefront of the planned Allied attack on the Enfidaville position.

That switch may not be directly related to Fraser’s rebuff of Churchill. The initial Allied plan gave the main role in this final attack to the British First Army, which would capture Tunis, and the oversized American II Corps, which would take Bizerte. Montgomery insisted that his Eighth Army have a role as well, and so the attack on Enfidaville would go ahead.

The new offensive, code-named Oration, would step off on the night of 19-20 April, with the New Zealanders in the center of a frontal attack on Enfidaville. A British division (50th Northumberland) would be on their right flank, with 4th Indian Division on their left. Seventh Armoured Division would follow up any breakthrough.

The plan required all three attacking divisions to move from the desert plain up into the Tunisian hill country, where the Axis had very strong natural positions available to them. Montgomery and the X Corps commander in direct charge of the operation, Sir Brian Horrocks, appear to have counted on the defenders having lost the will to fight. But they were mistaken.

Stuart light tanks of the New Zealand Divisional Cavalry.

It took the Kiwis two days of heavy fighting to overcome the Axis defenses, and then another day to fight off an Italian counter-attack and re-take lost ground. They did not break through the Axis, mostly Italian, lines. Operation Oration cost the New Zealanders 536 casualties, and even the New Zealand Official History questions the entire point of the exercise. The Axis line had been shoved back a few kilometers, just over 700 prisoners had been taken, but little else had changed.

By this point, Montgomery had absented himself from Eighth Army to devote his full attention to the invasion of Sicily, leaving things in Horrocks’ hands. Horrocks appears to have lacked the gravitas to point out that the Eighth Army’s lines were much farther from the campaign’s final objectives than were those of First Army and II Corps, making the advance rather pointless. Planning went forward for a renewed offensive, which opened on the night of the 23rd, targeting a rise known as Djebel el Hamaid. Once that had been taken, the Kiwis attacked the next rise, Djebel el Srafi.

The Italian 136th “Young Fascist” Armored Division, which had never actually fielded any tanks, held on grimly to Djebel el Srafi. The New Zealanders made it to the crest but could not push the Fascists off of it, and counter-attacks drove them back. Afterwards the neighboring British and Indian divisions took over the New Zealand sector.

That ended major combat operations for 2nd New Zealand Division in Africa. Kiwi troops helped mop up isolated Axis units for the next three weeks until their final surrender, sustaining a few casualties despite instructions that the division was to rest while the politicians decided whether to send it to Italy in the next phase of the Mediterranean campaign or return it to the Pacific.

By this point, the troops had become tired of war. They resented men called up into formations at home which had not left New Zealand, while some of the division’s troops had been with the colors since the division was mustered into service and seen combat in Greece and Crete in 1941. No men went home on furlough until July 1943, and many of those refused to go back to the front. Even so, the New Zealanders would go on to fight at Monte Cassino and up the Italian peninsula to Trieste, though many of the men had finally been rotated home.

The Kiwi troops had become victims of their own success and fighting reputation. British commanders wanted them for the toughest assignments, and over and over the New Zealanders delivered. Montgomery would later ask that they be withdrawn from the Cassino battles – so they could be moved to England and spearhead the Normandy landings.

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Mike Bennighof is president of Avalanche Press and holds a doctorate in history from Emory University. A Fulbright Scholar and NASA Journalist in Space finalist, he has published an unknowable number of books, games and articles on historical subjects. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama with his wife, three children and his new puppy. He will never forget his dog, Leopold. Leopold knew the number.

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