Battle of the Mareth Line the only mobile infantry groups available. Battle of the Mareth Line The Battle of the Mareth Line or the Battle of Mareth was an attack in the Second World War by the British Eighth Army (General Bernard Montgomery) in Tunisia, against the Mareth Line held by the Italo-German 1st Army (General Giovanni Messe). It was the first big operation by the Eighth Army since the Second Battle of El Alamein months previously. On 19 March 1943, Operation Pugilist, the first British attack, established a bridgehead but a break-out attempt was defeated by Axis counter-attacks. Pugilist established an alternative route of
Second Battle of El Alamein the DAF to be cautious, reduce the number of offensive sorties on 5 November and protect the Eighth Army. The Axis made a fighting withdrawal to El Agheila but Rommel's troops found themselves exhausted and with few replacements, while Montgomery had planned to transport material over great distances, to provide the Eighth Army with of supplies per day. Huge quantities of engineer stores had been collected to repair transport infrastructure and the railway line from El Alamein to Fort Capuzzo, despite having been blown up in over 200 places, was quickly repaired. In the month after Eighth Army reached Capuzzo,