Yoicks!

The fox lost his tail last week. Rommel let Montgomery overtake him and, before he knew it, Montgomery had bitten off his brush.

Erwin Rommel's retreat from El Agheila had begun with an orderliness that was almost sedate. There was the suspicion that he had already withdrawn the bulk of his army, leaving only enough troops for a bluff. He sprinkled his trail with land mines and booby traps* and loped off along the coast.

But presently there were signs that the fox was in distress. Allied planes pounded him. Rommel began to stumble and duck.

It was then that Montgomery got on his flanks. As Rommel moved along the three-lane coastal highway, British tanks, light artillery and motorized infantry drew abreast of his rear guard. They moved fast and stealthily. Near Wadi Matratin the British sliced in and cut off this Axis tail. Most of the isolated troops were part of a German Panzer division. Mussolini's warriors, left in the lurch at El Alamein, were in the forefront of this latest retreat and far along the coast. In a three-day-long battle some of the Germans succeeded in fighting their way through and tying themselves on again to the main columns. The British catch was not large but it showed that the British pursuit was close.

Westward Rommel continued to flee until, at week's end, he was 225 miles from El Agheila and still pelting on toward Tripoli. He might stop short of that port. He might make a stand there just to keep such a handy harbor and supply base out of General Montgomery's hands. But there were increasing signs that he might retreat all the way to Tunisia.

There he could make a stand behind the Mareth Line, the "Little Maginot" of pillboxes and cement forts strung along the hills in southern Tunisia from the Gulf of Gabes 20 miles inland. There were already reports of Axis troops from Tripolitania hastening into Tunisia. There was even a report (from Berlin) that Rommel himself had left Tripolitania to go "elsewhere on another job." The report obviously was put out to save the fox's face, now that he had lost his tail. But it might be true. Rommel might have gone to Tunisia.

The Tunisian campaign was still at a stalemate (see below), but General Sir Bernard Law Montgomery continued to roll along the flat and ugly coast. Transport planes helped move up his vast and vital supplies. Last week, when his Eighth Army marched under the ludicrous triumphal Marble Arch near El Agheila, one of several which Mussolini had erected along his African highway, he was farther west than any British commander had ever been before in the long, seesaw African campaign.

* One trap: explosive charges wired to the bodies of dead Italians and Germans, which went off when British soldiers attempted to bury them.

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