page_title: 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division
section_title: Wadi Akarit
hierarchical_section_title: 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division / North Africa / Wadi Akarit
caption_attribution_description: English: The British Army in Tunisia 1943 Men of the 7th Battalion, The Green Howards, stage a re-enactment of the storming of Point 85 during the Gabes Gap battles, 11 April 1943.
context_page_description: The 50th (Northumbrian) Infantry Division was an infantry division of the British Army that saw distinguished service in the Second World War. Pre-war, the division was part of the Territorial Army and the two Ts in the divisional insignia represent the three main rivers of its recruitment area, namely the rivers Tyne, and Tees. The division served in almost all of the major engagements of the European War from 1940 until late 1944 and also served with distinction in North Africa, the Mediterranean and Middle East from mid-1941 to 1943. The 50th Division was one of two British divisions to land in Normandy on D-Day, 6 June 1944, where it landed on Gold Beach. Four men of the division were awarded the Victoria Cross during the war, more than any other division of the British Army during the Second World War.
context_section_description: For the next several days the division was employed in tidying the battle-field and burying the dead. On 2 April the division was told to supply a brigade for the coming battle at the next line at Wadi Akarit, which runs from the sea to impassable salt marshes of the Chott el Fejej, while the Germans were distracted by the advance of Lieutenant General George S. Patton's U.S. II Corps to the west. The 69th Brigade was sent forward with the division machine gunners and a squadron of tanks from the 3rd County of London Yeomanry (Sharpshooters), but they were not to be supported by the divisional artillery as all available transport was being used to move Eighth Army supplies. Fire support was to come from the 51st (Highland) Division's artillery, the infantry of which were to attack on their right, while the 4th Indian Division attacked on their left. In the early morning of 6 April, the attack achieved its early objectives but then came under heavy fire which killed Lieutenant Colonel Seagrim, who had won the V.C. only recently. The 5th East Yorkshires' leading company suffered over 70% casualties, and during this attack Private Eric Anderson won a posthumous V.C., killed while attending to the wounded on the battlefield. The 6th Green Howards now passed through the first wave and also took casualties:
  He was no sooner on his feet than a single shot rang out and Coughlan...dropped dead in an instant. ... then my rage was up ... Angrily, I grabbed poor Coughlan's machine gun ... When we were about ten yards away we had reached the top of the slit trench and we killed any of the survivors, five of them cowering in the bottom of the trench. It was no time for pussy footing: we were consumed with rage and had to kill them to pay for our fallen pal. We were so intoxicated, we could not hold back, given the chance they would have killed us.
  — Pte Bill Cheal 6th Green Howards
   By 11:00 the battle was over, the tanks of the Yeomanry having got past the anti-tank ditch, and four hours later the 8th Armoured Brigade pushed on past the Wadi. The brigade had overrun parts of the Italian La Spezia Division.
  The Eighth Army's attack north along the eastern coast of Tunisia, and the First Army's advance west, led eventually to the surrender of Axis forces in North Africa, on 13 May 1943, with almost 250,000 men taken prisoner, a number equal to that at Stalingrad on the Eastern Front earlier in the year. On 19 April, the division, now commanded by Major-General Sidney Kirkman (formerly the Commander, Royal Artillery (CRA) of the Eighth Army) after Nichols was sacked by Eighth Army commander Bernard Montgomery, was relieved by the 56th (London) Infantry Division and withdrawn from the front line, and on 24 April the 50th Division was ordered back to Alexandria by road. The division arrived on 11 May with all of the vehicles it had started out with some 2,000 miles previously, even though some had to be towed.
caption: Men of the 7th Battalion, Green Howards, stage a re-enactment of the storming of Point 85 during the Gabes Gap battles, 11 April 1943.
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