ABSTRACT
The need for the Eighth Army to make all speed into Tunisia, and to bring relief to the hard-pressed Anglo-American troops, was great. Yet it was natural, psychologically and administratively, that the Eighth Army, as well as its commander, should show a tendency to pause at Tripoli, to rest for a little while upon its laurels. The momentum that had carried it forward from Egypt could not be maintained. Moreover it had almost sprinted over the last lap of the course to the winning post. There was the need to re-open the port of Tripoli, and to move up the 10th Corps from Benghazi, to set in motion an enormous ‘tail’, to get a second wind. Quite naturally General Montgomery wanted to draw his army together again; to bring its powerful body into closer contact with its head, ready for the final bound in North Africa.
