Kitsune
06-19-2004, 08:10 AM
Kasserine Pass,
30 January-22 February 1943
MARTIN BLUMENSON
Part I:
When World War II opened in Europe in September 1939, the U .S . Army
lacked the capacity to wage modern warfare . Although many dedicated
individual professional soldiers had during the 1920s and 1930s conscientiously
studied to be ready for the next war, decline, neglect, and stagnation
marked America's military forces . As the Army's strength decreased, its
potential to function decayed . Whether this "tragically insufficient" establishment
was capable of restoring itself quickly in a time of emergency became
questionable .' The Army, which had shrunk in size between 1919 and the
mid-1930s, was unable to absorb new techniques of waging war . Equipment
deteriorated continuously as World War I stocks were used up. Personnel
shortages brought Regular Army training to a standstill in 1934 . The Army
still "had ample time to rebuild itself, but no money." Without adequate
funds, raising a credible Army and concluding contracts for modern materiel
were impossible . Several years later, the Army received "more money, but
time . . . was lacking ." 2
Several circumstances accounted for the Army's weakness . Victory in
World War I had bred complacency and inhibited imaginative ideas and
experiments in doctrine, organization, and materiel . A revulsion against war
in general and disillusionment with World War I in particular, together with
faith in the oceans as bulwarks of protection, had prompted retreat into
national isolation and desire to avoid foreign entanglements . Because of the
great economic depression, congressional appropriations had dwindled, manpower
had declined, and the development and procurement of weapons and
equipment had languished. Even after World War II began in Europe, the
American public had remained lethargic toward military issues . A "large and
expensive combat-ready military structure" could not be supported, and "for
two decades after 1920 the Army and the National Guard together were quite
incapable of waging war ."3 As Japanese aggression in Asia and as German
and, to a lesser extent, Italian preparations for war and expansion in Europe
created international tensions, President . Franklin D . Roosevelt and Congress
gave some attention to military problems and allowed increased expenditures .
Yet General Malin Craig, the U .S. Army chief of staff, wondered whether a
renascence might be too late . In the summer of 1939, he warned that at least
two years were required to transform funds into military power . "Time is the
only thing," he said, "that may be irrevocably lost . " 4
At the outbreak of the war in Europe, the U .S. Army was still seriously
undermanned and underequipped, practiced obsolete procedures with outmoded
weapons, and from 1933 ranked seventeenth in size among the armies
of the world . The actual strength of the Regular Army in 1939 totaled fewer
than 190,000 troops, who were scattered, usually in battalions, among 130
posts, camps, and stations . Although Craig's successor, General George C .
Marshall, predicted the impossibility of expanding and modernizing the
establishment overnight, that was exactly what the Army would have to do .'
How well the Army had performed the task of rehabilitating itself would
become apparent in February 1943 during a series of engagements in Tunisia
that came to be known as the Battle of Kasserine Pass .
Rapid demobilization after World War I had left the Regular Army with
130,000 men on 1 January 1920 . 6 The National Defense Act of that year
authorized 280,000 active-duty soldiers, but Congress reduced the number to
150,00 regulars in 1922, to 135,000 in the following year, and to 118,750 in
1927 . The National Guard, with a ceiling of 450,000 members, rarely totaled
half that number, while about 100,000 officers, and men, receiving at best
indifferent attention, formed the Organized Reserve Corps . 7 Consisting of
110,000 men in 1936, the standing Army lacked'airplanes, tanks, combat and
scout cars, antiaircraft artillery guns, searchlights, fire-control equipment,
.50-caliber machine guns, and other vital materiel . The United States "on its
own initiative had rendered itself more impotent than Germany under the
military limitations of the Treaty of Versailles . "8 Authorized a 165,000-
member Regular Army in 1937, and a 210,000 level in 1939, the U .S . Army
was without a single division prepared for combat .
The experience of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) in France
in 1918, particularly the final phase, largely determined Army doctrine during
the interwar years, Offensive operations had featured large and heavy artillery
preparations, barrages timed to move forward on successive lines ahead of the
infantry assault, use of tanks to assist infantry through the barbed wire and
across enemy trenches, and massive advance of infantry to engage in hand-tohand
combat with the enemy . The National Defense Act of 1920 confirmed
refighting, "the old kind of war" in the future . 9 Proficiency in the rifle and
bayonet used in open and fluid rather than in static warfare and the efficacy of
the "headlong attack" were basic doctrinal beliefs . 10 Infantry advancing to"engage and destroy the enemy by physical encounter" was the key to victory
in battle . Despite the emergence of machine guns, automotive transportation,
tanks, planes, and other developments, the rifle remained the most important
weapon. Doctrine relegated aircraft, tanks, machine guns, and artillery to
employment as auxiliary arms for the infantry and at the same time
proclaimed adherence to offensive and aggressive tactics ."
Tanks had formed a separate component in the AEF, and four battalions,
all using French and British models, participated in battle, but the National
Defense Act of 1920 placed tanks under infantry control . This reinforced the
idea of gearing tanks' forward movement to the pace of the infantry soldier .
Tanks became in effect self-propelled artillery pieces to assist the infantry
advance . The Army built thirty-five between 1920 and 1935, most of them test
models, and the first standard model adopted in 1938 represented no doctrinal
change . Tanks continued as infantry-support weapons . 12 The horse cavalry
continued to have an eminent place in doctrine, not only for reconnaissance
and communications but more especially for pursuit . In search of traditional
mobility but prohibited from developing tanks, the cavalry experimented with
light armored cars but made little progress because of endemic penury and
meager manpower . 13 All the combat arms tried to gain mechanized vehiclesthose
used in combat-and motorized vehicles-those used for transportation-
but the efforts withered . Motorization for artillery was deemed to be
'`madness ." Attempts to organize and establish a mechanized force in 1928
and again in 1930-31 failed .'4
The Army Air Corps, practicing a variety of functions and missions,
turned increasingly to strategic bombardment and neglected close tactical
support of ground forces . "Air Corps infatuation with the heavy bomber and
strategic air power" resulted in "a reasonably good bomber . . . but no
similarly adequate fighters and attack planes to support surface battles ." 15
The doctrinal coordination of ground and air action was primitive . The
artillery gave thought to centralizing the control of gunfire, both for direct and
indirect firing, and also to the use of forward observers . Lack of resources,
particularly communications equipment and manpower, inhibited solid development
of these new techniques . 16 Except for conversations among thoughtful
officers and some small tactical experimentation in the field, doctrine remained
relatively unchanged between the wars . Lacking the means to try new
procedures, the Army kept alive its stress on offensive and aggressive
operations . As late as the summer of 1939, the Army was "still attuned to the
combat styles of 1918 ."17
1 Realistic exercises to train and test individual soldier, unit, and combined-
arms proficiency, to practice procedures in the field, to disseminate
knowledge, to stimulate air-ground cooperation, to give officers experience in
handling large organizations-in short, to achieve war readiness-were out of
the question for most of the interwar period because of the stringent economy
in defense expenditures, the low peacetime strengths of the Regular Army, the
National Guard, and the Organized Reserve Corps, and the dispersal of the
few divisions in existence . 18 In overseas posts-Hawaii, Panama, and the
Philippines-units could concentrate for periodic war games, but the three
regular infantry divisions in the continental United States were so scattered
that it was difficult and costly to bring together divisional components for
training . Not until the latter part of the 1930s did maneuvers involve at least a
corps headquarters and two or more divisions . 19 The imposition of nonmilitary
duties also detracted from serious attention to training . The Civilian
Conservation Corps (CCC), created in 1933 to give work to unemployed
young men, came under Army administration, and this responsibility diverted
officers and men from drill .20 Units of an under-strength National
Guard and members of the Organized Reserve Corps gathered once a week in
armories and spent two weeks of the summer in the field every year to work
with obsolete equipment in very short supply . The training was rudimentary .
The primary function of the National Guard was to be ready at the behest of
state governors to help maintain public order during natural disasters and
civil strife . While duty of this sort built unit cohesion, it was less than valuable
as wartime preparation .
The War Department created four field armies in 1932, and, although
they "existed only on paper, the department gave them primary responsibility
to train the units in their areas .21 Four years later, in 1936, no corps
headquarters troops and few army headquarters troops existed . As late as
1939, the First Army had two officers serving as permanent headquarters staff
members. No wonder that the First Army, in a major exercise in 1935, could
do no more than test the assembly of 36,000 troops . The Third Army staged
an exercise in 1938 involving 24,000 troops, and the outcome ; according to its
commander, proved the continuing usefulness of the horse cavalry . In 1939,
the First Army conducted a series of exercises for about 50,000 troops,
actually a collection of individual organizations without supporting units . At
23 percent of authorized war strength, the force had no 155-mm howitzers,
was short in antitank weapons, had on hand 6 percent of its infantry mortars,
33 percent of its machine guns, and 17 percent of its trucks . One river crossing
used up more than half the engineer pontoon equipment available to the entire
U.S. Army. The outcome of the maneuver, according to the commander,
proved the continuing, utility of the World War I square-type infantry
division . 22
That these exercises proved the validity of concepts already outmoded
indicated the nature of the maneuver problems and the methods in the field
for solving them . By 1939, the Army had virtually forgotten how to conduct
training on a broad scale . Very few officers could handle organizations larger
than a battalion . Advanced officers' courses in the branch schools were
generally stereotyped and routine, although the temporary association of
young officers, presumably the best of their generations, provoked discussion
among them and stimulated professional reading .23 The two-year course at
the Command and General Staff College stressed solving military problems by
the "school solution," and although the practice stifled initiative and
originality, it did produce officers who were "standard" in thought processes,
who were at home and at ease in any headquarters and unit . Early in the
postwar period, the college taught what was called the latest tactical doctrine
of World War I . New tactics and techniques of the separate arms, as well as of
the combined arms, found places in the curriculum by 1929, mechanization
and motorization were taught beginning in 1935, and the employment of the
mechanized division received attention in the following year, all on a highly
theoretical basis .24 The Army War College offered lectures by military and
civilian experts, expected students to read and to do research, and had them
solve more or less realistic problems derived from history and theory,
individually as well as by committee . The final exercise, visiting the principal
Civil War battlefields in Virginia and Pennsylvania in order to follow the
operations of the armies, corps, and divisions, indicated a persistent concern
with the past .
Standard weapons and equipment were of World War I vintage : the
Springfield Model 1903 rifle throughout the Army (although the M1 Garand
semiautomatic rifle was in limited production by 1939), the 75-mm and 155-
mm howitzers for the artillery ; the .50-caliber machine gun for antitank and
antiaircraft use (although the 37-mm gun was being produced by 1939), and
the Stokes three-inch trench mortar for the infantry (although 60-mm and 81-
mm mortars were being developed by 1939) . About a thousand tanks were left
over from World War I, and in 1934, only twelve postwar tanks were in
service . All the tanks on hand were lightly armed and armored . Walter
Christie built a tank with a new suspension system and with interchangeable
wheels and tracks, but the Army purchased only a few experimental models . 25
The organization of the War Department General Staff fostered compartmentalization
and inhibited the use of combined arms . Chiefs of infantry,
cavalry, and artillery presided over more or less autonomous branches and
discouraged interaction and mutual experimentation . The basic combat
organization was the infantry division, nonmotorized, structured as in World
War I with two brigades, each of two regiments of four battalions each .
Toward the end of the 1930s, some students and faculty membefs at the Army
War College recommended reducing the size of the division in order to
enhance mobility and flexibility . At least one student committee suggested
abolishing the brigade level of command . From 1936 on, Lesley J . McNair,
first at Fort Sill, later at Fort Leavenworth, worked out a blueprint to
streamline the square-type division to triangular shape, not only to attain
mobility and flexibility, but also to gain personnel for corps and army
headquarters troops and support units . Nothing would come of this before
1939 .`
A start toward mechanization occurred in 1928 with the formation of an
experimental organization composed of two tank battalions, an armored
cavalry troop, an infantry battalion, an artillery battalion, engineer and signal
companies, a medical detachment, an ammunition train, and a squadron of
observation planes . The provisional force was broken up after three months
for lack of funds . While the infantry branch did little to further armored
warfare, the cavalry developed "combat cars (light tanks) and in 1932
activated the 7th Cavalry Brigade (Mechanized) . 26 In the summer of 1939,
the combat forces of the U .S . Army consisted of three embryonic infantry
divisions at half strength and six others consisting of skeleton cadres; two
cavalry divisions, each totaling about 1,200 men ; the 7th Cavalry Brigade
(Mechanized) at half strength ; several assorted regiments ; and 17,000 airmen
using obsolete planes . 27
The U.S . Army chiefs of staff in the 1920s and 1930s-Generals Peyton
March, John J . Pershing, John Hines, Charles P . Summerall, Jr., Douglas
MacArthur, and Malin Craig-struggled to modernize the Army. Their
efforts were in vain because of the lack of general public interest and the
scarcity of funds . On the intermediate and lower levels, military life during
the greater part of the interwar period was generally one of stultification . The
prerogative of seniority brought older officers to important positions, and
many lacked energy and stamina, looked with satisfaction on the achievements
of World War I, and were cautious and conservative in their outlook .
Yet a group of younger professionals was studying the art of war, reading
military journals and books, and seeking to prepare themselves for combat ; a
surprising number would attain prominence in positions of great responsibility
during World War II . It was a wonder that these officers serving "in the
dullness of a skeletonized army" emerged in the 1940s as brilliant administrators
and leaders . 28
The state of affairs on the other side was quite different . The Germans
after World War I, restricted by the Treaty of Versailles to an army of 100,000
men, turned this force into a professional cadre capable of quick expansion in
time of war. Seeking military reasons for their defeat, maintaining their
tradition of studying the lessons of the past to apply them to the future, and
determined to be ready for modern warfare, the Germans, who had had but a
few tanks in the Gteat War, restored mobility to the battlefield . They
developed armored warfare according to the precepts of J . F. C . Fuller and B .
H . Liddell Hart and created a doctrine of blitzkrieg (lightning war) founded on
the principles of the so-called Hutier tactics, that is, to exploit quickly penetra-
' The 2d Infantry Division was triangularized in 1937 for field tests, but on completion of the
exercises it returned to its original organization .
tions of the enemy line by avoiding centers of resistance and striking deeply
into the rear in order to paralyze communications . Civil flying and glider
enthusiasts formed nuclei for a resuscitated air force, which concentrated on
lending close tactical support to the ground forces .
The rise to power of Adolf Hitler in 1933 gave immediacy to a wellintegrated
program of militarization beyond Versailles Treaty limits . A
gigantic industrial renascence, in large part intended to overcome economic
depression, provided weapons and equipment for an army increasing in
numbers and in skill . By 1936, the German Army and Air Force were strong
and well trained ; intervention in the Spanish Civil War tested doctrine,
weapons, equipment, and organization and gave experience to those who took
part . The apparently united will of the German people to restore the former
power of Germany complemented astounding progress in the art of war .
Although German military leaders felt themselves unready for general war
before 1942, the successes of Hitler's diplomacy in the 1930s-in the
Rhineland, Austria, and Czechoslovakia-stilled their reservations . German
victories in Poland, Denmark, Norway, and Western Europe in 1939 and
1940 were astonishing. The German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941,
although promising quick success, bogged down because of the enormous
distances, contradictory objectives, and, eventually, the winter weather .
The Italians shared with Benito Mussolini dreams of restoring the glory
of ancient Rome . Although the Italian ground forces succeeded in Ethiopia
against a primitive foe, Italian participation in the Spanish Civil War and the
later 1941 thrust from Albania into Greece showed deficiencies in organization,
weapons, equipment, and leadership, perhaps partially the result of a
lack of the natural resources, particularly oil, required for modern war . A few
elite units were first rate, but many Italian formations reflected the general
corruption of the state system . The Italian Army in North Africa, specifically
in Libya, had light, under-powered tanks and trucks, World War I artillery
pieces, old-fashioned antitank and antiaircraft guns, and obsolete rifles and
machine guns .29
The Germans and Italians fought a coalition war under the disadvantageous
lack of a coalition machinery to translate policy on the highest level
into strategy. The two allies cooperated through loosely organized, complicated,
and often poorly defined and ineffective diplomatic .and special liaison
arrangements . Although the two dictators, Hitler and Mussolipi, occasionally
met, they fought parallel wars . German aid, in the form of troops, weapons,
equipment, supplies, and leadership, was necessary to sustain the Italian
effort, and this bred German feelings of superiority, disdain, even contempt
for Italy as well as an Italian sense of inferiority and jealousy . The Axis war
was poorly directed, and the inability to synchronize activities was made
evident in the Battle of Kasserine Pass .
On 1 September 1939, on the same day that Germany invaded Poland, Gen .
George C. Marshall became U .S. Army Chief of Staff . 30 He immediately
implemented policies to retire older officers, reassign those who were incompetent,
and bring younger and more energetic men to responsible positions, 31
A week after the German invasion, President Roosevelt raised the authorized
strength of the Regular Army to 227,000 men and the National Guard to
235,000 and permitted members of the Organized Reserve Corps to volunteer
for active duty . The War Department that fall, in accordance with McNair's
plans, reduced the size of the infantry division and reorganized it from a
square to a triangular type, giving it three infantry regiments consisting of
three battalions each, The gain in manpower as a result of triangularization,
as well as the influx of men into the Regular Army and National Guard,
enabled the War Department to hold genuine corps and army maneuvers in
the spring of 1940, the first full-fledged corps maneuvers since 1918 .
The task of attaining war preparedness began seriously in 1940 as larger
and more realistic exercises and maneuvers developed and refined new
doctrine, techniques, and equipment . In January 1940, the Fourth Army
Headquarters laid out an unprecedented amphibious exercise involving
Army, Navy, and Air Corps elements . Fourteen thousand participating troops
of the 3d Division moved by water from Tacoma, Washington, landed on the
shore of Monterey Bay, California, and "captured" San Francisco .32 Maneuvers
in Georgia and Louisiana in April and May 1940 tested new types of
corps headquarters directing triangular infantry divisions . At the same time,
the 7th Mechanized Cavalry Brigade and the infantry's Provisional
Motorized Tank Brigade came together to form an improvised armored
division . Recommendations from these exercises included combining the
regimental artillery battalions of an infantry division under the central control
of a division artillery, expanding the mechanized brigade into an armored
division, and creating a second armored division . 33
Spurring these developments was the phenomenal success of the German
blitzkrieg in France in May and June, which produced consternation, then
defeatism and apathy, in the War Department . How could the German tanks
be stopped? Marshall dispelled the gloom with two positive decisions . He
established the Armored Force, whose mission was to match the power of
German mobile forces . He directed his planners to provide antitank defense of
an offensive nature to halt the enemy's massed armor . 34
The Armored Force, under Brig . Gen . Adna R . Chaffee, came into
being in July 1940 . The I Armored Corps, with two divisions under its
command-the 1st at Fort Knox, Kentucky, the 2d at Fort Benning,
Georgia-supervised training . Both armored divisions were formed with a
reconnaissance battalion and an armored brigade, the latter consisting of two
regiments of light tanks armed with the 37-mm gun, a regiment of medium
tanks armed with the short-barreled 75-mm gun, an infantry regiment of two
battalions, a field-artillery regiment, plus an additional field-artillery battalion,
an engineer battalion, and signal, ordnance, quartermaster, and
medical units .35
,Activated on 15 July 1940 with Regular Army personnel later augmented
by draftees, the 1st Armored Division, which would see action in the Battle of
Kasserine Pass, pioneered the development of tank gunnery and used
forward-observer fire-direction techniques developed after World War I . By
1941, although shortages of all sorts existed-for example, only sixty-six
medium tanks produced in the United States were on hand-the 1st Armored
Division was able to participate in the Louisiana and Carolinas maneuvers .
The units engaged in simulated battle during daylight and night hours,
practiced maintenance, performed logistics and administration, and lived in
field conditions .36
Both armored divisions participated in the Louisiana maneuvers in
September 1941 . Involving 400,000 troops, pitting for the first time one field
army against another, featuring armored and paratroop forces, assembling
the unheard-of number of more than 1,000 aircraft, the exercises demonstrated
"an unusual amount of experimentation . "$7 The foremost purposes
were to fight large-unit battles, to test motorized and mechanized techniques,
to foster air-ground cooperation, and to practice medical evacuation, demolitions,
reconnaissance, and intelligence . 38 In the Carolinas in October and
November, the training exercises were a major test of the 1st and 2d Armored
Divisions . A total of 865 tanks and armored scout cars opposed 4,320 guns
effective against tanks . The results were inconclusive, and no firm doctrine
could be enunciated and written, mainly because of shortages in authorized
strength and weapons in all the participating units . Missing were 10 percent of
the mortars, 40 percent of the 37-mm guns, 18 percent of the 155-mm
howitzers, and 87 percent of the .50-caliber machine guns . 39
Clearly, features of the armored division required modification . When
Chaffee took ill, Lt . Gen . Jacob L . Devers replaced him as chief of the
Armored Force on 1 August 1941 . An artilleryman, Devers improved
firepower . Maj . Gen . George S . Patton, Jr ., commanding the I Armored
Corps, stressed mobility . Together they gave the armored divisions better
balance .40 On 1 March 1942, as Maj . Gen . Orlando Ward, who had
commanded the 1st Armored Brigade in the Louisiana and Carolinas
maneuvers, took command of the 1st Armored Division, a drastic reorganization
of the Armored Division was under way . In order to gain flexibility, the
brigade headquarters was eliminated and replaced by two combat commands .
Each combat command had its own intelligence and operations capabilities
but depended on the division for logistics and administration . Three separate
self-propelled field-artillery battalions operated under the division artillery .
The division trains controlled the service elements . A higher proportion of
infantry to tanks was achieved by increasing the number of battalions in the
infantry regiment to three and by reducing the number of tank regiments
from three to two regiments of three battalions each . A total of 14,620 troops
manned the division, which was equipped with .30-caliber carbines, selfpropelled
and towed antitank guns, self-propelled assault guns, .30- and .50-
caliber machine guns, 105-mm self-propelled howitzers, 60-mm and 81-mm
mortars, light and medium tanks, armored and scout cars, and half-tracks .
Unfortunately, much equipment was lacking .41
Before the 1st Armored Division could train in its new form, it received a
massive infusion of recently inducted replacement troops, bringing the
division to authorized strength, and went to Fort Dix in April 1942 for
shipment overseas . Overage officers were relieved and replaced, and the
division sailed for Northern Ireland in May, and trained there for five months .
The stress was on small-unit training and gunnery . The work improved tankartillery
cooperation, but tank-infantry and air-ground cooperation remained
weak. 42
In November 1942, the 1st Armored Division embarked in ships again,
this time for a voyage to North Africa and the eventual engagement of
Kasserine Pass . It would go into battle with two battalions of light tanks armed
with the 37-mm gun, three battalions of medium tanks armed with the lowvelocity
75-mm gun, and one battalion of early-model Sherman medium
tanks . The "relative weakness in armor and fire power when compared with
the German tanks was not suspected until they met in Tunisia ." 43
To stop German massed armor, the War Department created the tank
destroyer, so named to connote offensive and aggressive characteristics as
opposed to the defensive and passive meaning of, "antitank . " A "marriage of
the artillery gun to truck and tractor," the tank destroyer was to embody an
aggressive spirit and to destroy enemy tanks by maneuver and fire . 44 To
create an ideal tank destroyer with mobility and punch, quickly and easily
fired and giving the crew protection against small-arms fire, was a difficult
task . From a 37-mm gun mounted on a quarter-ton truck or jeep, the tank
destroyer evolved to a 57-mm then 75-mm, 76-mm, and finally 90-mm gun
mounted on a carriage resembling a tank .
During maneuvers in August 1940, the employment of antitank guns,
manned by antitank companies in the infantry regiments, was passive ; they
were deployed in cordon defense . A year later, bringing the companies
together under central control proved a more satisfactory practice for
offensive, aggressive movements in large-scale exercises . Yet observers noted
tendencies to commit the guns prematurely and to fragment their strength . In
November 1941, the War Department projected activating fifty-three tankdestroyer
battalions, and a month later, eight infantry antitank battalions
were redesignated tank-destroyer battalions . Tank destroyers became a
provisional branch with a Tactical and Firing Center to supervise organization
and training. Not until August 1942 when Camp Hood, Texas, opened,
did a thoroughly rounded program begin . A tank-destroyer field manual
published in June 1942 developed the motto "Seek, Strike, Destroy." The
first officers candidate class graduated in October. By then, tank-destroyer
battalions were attached and later assigned to divisions . The War Department
planned to activate a total of 222 battalions .
The antitank rocket launcher called the bazooka, a grenade with a new
tail assembly, came into existence in mid-1942 . It was recommended for issue
to tank-destroyer battalions . Training in its use started in December 1942.
That was too late for the units already overseas, and bazookas were issued to
troops already in Tunisia and to soldiers aboard ships . However, no one really
knew how to operate and employ them . 45
By far the most important entity dealing with mobilization, organization,
and training came into being in July 1940 . This was General Headquarters,
U.S . Army, known as GHQ modeled on Pershing's AEF headquarters . U .S.
Army Chief of Staff Marshall named Brigadier General McNair, then
commandant of the Command and General Staff College, to be his chief of
staff at GHQ and gave him a free hand to fashion the combat units into a
proficient fighting force . GHQ was inserted structurally between the War
Department General Staff and the four field armies, which had formerly
conducted training . Although army commanders were initially reluctant to
relinquish their training function, McNair quickly established a standard
system progressive in nature, that is, a regular training cycle from the recruit
through the unit to combined-arms teams .
After the German spring campaigns in Denmark and Western Europe in
1940, the president raised the Regular Army to 280,000 men, then to
375,000 . In September, authorized to do so by the Congress, he enlarged the
Regular Army to 500,000 troops and called the 270,000 men of the National
Guard into active federal service for a year . The Selective Service Act in the
same month permitted the induction of 630,000 draftees into uniform . This
gave the Army a strength of 1 .4 million troops . 46 The absence of sufficient
housing, mess, and training facilities in the camps, posts, and stations made it
impossible to transfer the eighteen National Guard divisions to federal status
at once, and they came on active duty over the space of a year. By mid-1941,
almost ,1 .5 million men had been mobilized, assigned to units, and were
engaged in all forms of training .47 The National Guard divisions were
restructured into triangular shape and brought to full authorized strength .
Commanders and staff officers who owed their appointments'to state politics
and who were less than qualified on grounds of military education or physical
conditioning were removed and replaced by Regular Army officers . Complicating
the massive mobilization and training experience were the activation
of new divisions and other units, revisions in tables of organization and
equipment, the adoption of newly developed weapons-examples were the
tank destroyers, the replacement beginning in 1940 of World War I-type 3
inch mortars by the 60-mm and 81-mm mortars, the issue of the M1
semiautomatic Garand rifle after 1941-and the acceptance of new combat
doctrine . That the entire process did not collapse into chaos bordered on the
miraculous .48
McNair set into motion, inspected, and critiqued a variety of exercises to
test proficiency and identify failures in the training programs . For example,
the critique of a First Army maneuver in August 1940 noted such important
errors as improper use of combat teams and motor transportation, inability to
reconnoiter and maintain contact between adjacent units, and deficiencies in
signal communication, antitank guns, ammunition supply, and medical
evacuation . All National Guard units, in particular, reflected inadequate
training . Many officers and men were physically soft and undisciplined ; many
headquarters, particularly signal, military police, ordnance, engineer, and
medical, were nonexistent ; and weapons and equipment were in extremely
short supply . GHQ maneuvers in Tennessee in early 1941 showed the troops
still road bound, ignorant of field manuals, unable to reconnoiter properly,
and generally deficient in basic- and small-unit training ; leadership was weak
and unable to coordinate with adjacent and supporting units and with units of
other branches .49
The apex of McNair's training efforts came at the Louisiana and
Carolinas maneuvers in 1941 . Testing army aviation, GHQ found it poorly
coordinated with ground action . Ground troops underestimated air potential,
were weak in liaison and communications, had inadequate combat intelligence,
and were guilty of dispersed and fragmented efforts . There was a
general lack of discipline, an unwillingness to move off the roads, and a
reluctance to break column formations . 50 Yet the results of the Louisiana
maneuvers of 1941 confirmed "the soundness of existing policies ." 51 The
major lesson of the Carolinas maneuvers was "the crying need for infantry
support, both within the [armored] division and between infantry and
armored divisions . " 52 Both maneuvers accelerated the creation of independent
tank battalions to work with infantry . A light plane, the Cub, for artillery
spotting began to be built in 1942 . What no one seemed to notice was how the
air service had thwarted the War Department's efforts to create air support of
ground forces . No procedures or command relationships existed for largescale
air-ground operations . 53
At the end of November 1941, just a few days before the Japanese
bombed Pearl Harbor and brought the United States into the war, McNair
judged whether the troops were ready for combat. They "could fight
effectively," he said, but "losses would be unduly heavy." Against the
Germans, he added prophetically, the results "might not be all that could be
desired." 54 There had simply not been enough time for training . At the time
of Pearl Harbor, 1,638,000 men were in Army uniform, but only a single
division and a single antiaircraft artillery regiment were on full war footing .
"Though a large Army was not ready for combat . . . the United States
entered the war . . . with a training program carefully thought out and in full
operation ."56 GHQ training principles included progression through a fourphase
sequence, tests in each phase, unit training with frequent review, free
maneuvers, immediate critiques, the goal of general combat proficiency,
integration of the tactical units, a stress on the responsibilities of commanding
officers at all levels, and an emphasis on battle realism . 57 In line with the last
principle, GHQ established the Desert Training Center in California and
Arizona early in 1942 . There, in a primitive environment, troops lived,
moved, and fought under simulated battle conditions . 58
Beginning in December 1940, the War Department abolished the
traditional two-year course at Leavenworth and instead offered short, special,
and refresher instruction to selected commanders and staff officers who were
scheduled to assume positions of major responsibility in new units . The Army
discontinued the War College course and assigned faculty and staff members
to the War Plans Division of the War Department General Staff and
elsewhere . 59 GHQ itself went out of existence in March 1942 . The War
Department abolished the branch chiefs and formed the Army Ground Forces
under McNair to continue training combat forces . Earlier maneuvers had
focused on testing equipment and training, but large-scale exercises in 1942
tested doctrine, particularly infantry-armor coordination, which improved,
and air-ground cooperation, which remained disappointing .60 Unfortunately,
the two major units that would fight at Kasserine Pass, the 1st Armored
Division and the 34th Infantry Division, did not take part in the 1942
exercises, for they were in Northern Ireland . As late as July 1942, the 1st
Armored Division was still awaiting delivery of much equipment, and the 34th
Division, which had just started training for amphibious landing, had few
antiaircraft guns and no tanks . 61 The tank destroyers with these divisions had
light 37-mm guns and light armored cars . Antiaircraft artillery units were
shipped overseas after attaining only "minimum proficiency in their weapons
and before receiving combat training with other ground arms or with
aviation ." Because of the wide dispersion . of training centers and the
insufficiency of planes to tow targets for firing practice, antiaircraft personnel
were quite simply "improperly trained," 62
The 34th Infantry Division, the first American division to go to Europe,
originated in the National Guard . It was chosen for overseas service presumably
because it was deemed to be well trained . Among its major organic
components was the 168th Infantry regiment, which had had a typical prewar
military upbringing and would be involved in the Battle of Kasserine Pass .63
The 168th had participated as an Iowa volunteer unit in the Civil War,
specifically in Grant's campaign against Vicksburg and in the later movement
of the Union Army through the Carolinas . Mobilized again in 1917, the
regiment fought in France as part of the 42d Rainbow Division . Members in
the 1920s and 1930s were proud of the unit's combat history and had a special
feeling of cohesion . Of northern European stock, the men were from the towns
of Atlantic, Council Bluffs, Glenwood, Red Oak, Villisca, Shenandoah, and
Carlinda, agricultural communities in the gently rolling hill country of
southwestern Iowa . In these towns, citizens had purchased shares to construct
armories for the companies of the regiment, and the state government paid
rent to the owners. An armory contained offices, a drill hall resembling a
basketball court, supply rooms, and facilities for reunions, dances, banquets,
and patriotic celebrations .
Guardsmen were, for the most part, unmarried men from eighteen to
thirty-five years of age . They received one dollar for attending a training
session, and the pay was important in attracting members during the
Depression . They met every Monday evening and practiced close-order drill
and the manual of arms . They occasionally performed small-unit maneuvers
on a football field or in a city square . They received summer training at Camp
Dodge, Iowa . The annual inspection in each armory was usually linked to a
military ball, the highlight of the social season . Maj . Walter Smith inspected
the southwestern Iowa units in 1939 and called them a "very very fine
organization ." Other regiments in northern and northwestern Iowa, in
Minnesota, and in North Dakota came together with the 168th to form the
34th Division, commanded in 1939 by Maj . Gen. E. A. Walsh of Minneapolis
. In the summer of 1940, the division trained at Camp Ripley,
Wisconsin . Upon the -troops' return to their armories, revised National Guard
programs and schedules doubled their training time . The average guardsman
in the 168th had eighteen months of service . Two-thirds were high school
graduates; about one-third had some education beyond high school . Captains
were between thirty-four and forty-five years of age, and many of them, and
more senior officers, had served in World War I . Quite a few men joined the
regiment in 1941 to avoid the draft .
The 34th Division was called into active federal service in February 1941 .
On 2 March, the men of the 168th Infantry had farewell dinners in the
armories in their home towns, paraded, then marched to the train stations .
They traveled to Camp Claiborne, Louisiana, which was still under construction
. Living in tents, the men engaged in close-order drill and small-unit
tactics, including night attacks . Some went to schools for special training .
Equipment and weapons were in such short supply that stovepipes simulated
mortars, trucks carried signs to denote their use as tanks, and broomsticks
served as rifles . The heaviest infantry weapon was the 37-mm gun . In April,
draftees from all over the country arrived to bring the 34th Division regiments
up to strength . The division participated in two maneuvers in Louisiana in
June and August.64 A Regular Army officer, Maj . Gen . Russell P . Hartle,
took command in August . In January 1942, when Hartle assumed command
of the V Corps, Maj . Gen. Charles W . Ryder, a West Point graduate,
succeeded him as division commander, and the division sailed for Northern
Ireland. The following month, the division was triangularized . The men
continued training, practicing amphibious landings in Scotland later that
year.
In November, the division participated in the North African invasion,
coming ashore near Algiers . Of the soldiers then constituting the 168th
Infantry, about 30 percent were from the local armories in southwestern Iowa .
Two hundred of these men were reported missing in action on 17 February
1943, a day of severe fighting during the Battle of Kasserine Pass .
In summary, the entire mobilization process, including the organization
and training of the U .S . Army, was hasty, largely improvised, and saved from
disaster by the stability and intelligence of leaders like Marshall and McNair .
This crash program gave the field forces a semblance of preparedness . Yet
maneuvers revealed many deficiences in basic soldiering skills and, among a
large proportion of officers, basic command skills . Shortages of weapons and
equipment and the need to improvise had hampered instruction . There was
insufficient time to permit individuals and units to acquire and become
proficient in the doctrine, weapons and equipment, and skills required for the
modern warfare of the 1940s . Organizations and men were still largely in tune
with the time and space factors that had prevailed in the previous war, They
had yet to adjust to the accelerated tempo and increased distances of the
battlefield-in particular, the necessary speed of reaction so well understood
by their adversaries . American leadership and manpower had the potential to
excel, but it would take the reality and the adversity of Kasserine Pass to
develop an inherent capacity for excellence .
Deployment of American forces began shortly after Pearl Harbor, when
Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston S . Churchill confirmed a
strategy unofficially reached during Anglo-American staff conversations in
1941 . The Allied leaders endorsed a Europe-first endeavor and established
machinery to direct the coalition military effort .65 The president and prime
minister worked through the British Chiefs of Staff and the American Joint
Chiefs of Staff sitting together to form the Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS) .
The CCS issued directives to the theater commanders who were supreme
Allied commanders or Allied comanders in chief-the terms were interchangeable-
and who would exercise a unified command over the forces of
both nations .
American strategists generally favored a massive blojv against the
German-occupied continent of Europe and a direct thrust into Germany. To
these ends, the 34th Infantry Division, the 1st Armored Division, and later
the 1st Infantry Division went to Northern Ireland, where they trained under
the V Corps headquarters . The European Theater of Operations, U .S . Army,
under General Eisenhower provided overall direction, and the II Corps
headquarters under Lt . Gen. Mark W . Clark, who had been McNair's closest
associate, served as the theater training command . The British preferred an
invasion of French Northwest Africa, where German and Italian troops were
absent as a result of the armistice terms of 1940. The French had pledged to
resist invasion, but if, as the Allies hoped, they quickly came over to the Allied
side, they would offer only brief resistance to the untried Americans . The
landings in the French territories would also threaten the Axis forces based in
Libya and fighting the British in Egypt .
North Africa became an active theater of operations in 1940 when Italian
forces attacked the British . The ensuing campaigns were of a seesaw nature,
with first one opponent, then the other achieving temporary success . In 1941,
to help Mussolini, Hitler sent General Erwin Rommel'sAfrika Korps of several
German divisions to North Africa . Subsequently, Rommel took command of
Panzer Grupp Afrika, which consisted of the Afrika Korps augmented by several
mobile Italian divisions; in 1942, he took charge of Panzerarmee Afrika, all the
German and Italian combat units . Mussolini and his Comando Supremo directed
the operations in North Africa through an Italian theater commander, To
facilitate Rommel's access to the German high command and to smooth Italo-
German coordination, Hitler dispatched Field Marshall Albert Kesselring to
Rome . At first commander of the German air forces in Italy, Kesselring was
the ranking German officer in the Mediterranean area and, as such, virtually
a theater commander. With Kesselring's support, Rommel attacked in May
1942 . By June, he was at El Alamein, Egypt, sixty miles short of the Nile .
This was the situation in mid-1942 when Roosevelt accepted Churchill's
suggestion to invade French Northwest Africa . Eisenhower, named Supreme
Allied Commander, and Clark, his deputy, formed a new Allied Force
Headquarters (AFHQ) in London and began to plan landings, code-named
TORCH, on the shores of Morocco and Algeria .
In August 1942, Rommel attacked from El Alamein only to be stopped
by General Sir Harold Alexander, commander of the British Middle East
Forces with headquarters in Cairo, and General Sir Bernard E . Montgomery,
commanding the British Eighth Army in Egypt . After receiving 300 brandnew
American Sherman tanks, the British took the offensive on 23 October
and forced Rommel to withdraw . As the British pursued, Rommel conducted
a retrograde movement across Libya . During that retreat, TORCH was
launched. The invasion took place on 8 November 1942 . A task force under
Ryder and consisting of the 34th Division, part of the 1st Armored Division,
and British elements made the easternmost landing near Algiers, where
fighting ended on the first day . Another task force under Maj . Gen . Lloyd R .
Fredendall's II Corps and containing the 1st Infantry Division and British
units invaded in the center near Oran, where combat terminated on the
second day. A wholly American task under Patton, sailing directly from the
United States, landed in the west near Casablanca and battled French forces
vigorously for three days .
These events introduced American troops to combat on the Atlantic side
of World War II . But this hardly constituted the first battle, for the French
were not the enemy. Most French commanders and units offered reluctant
opposition . French organization, doctrine, and war materiel had not been
updated since 1940 . Curiously, resistance met by the Americans had been
more intense and of longer duration in Morocco . The future participants in
the Battle of Kasserine Pass were those who had engaged in almost no active
operations . They saw their performance against the French as more than
adequate for success against the Germans and Italians . Confident of their
underpowered light tanks with 37-mm guns, trusting the power of the 57-mm
and 75-mm guns on their Shermans, they believed themselves to be blooded
and tried in action .66
The French authorities in North Africa, after agreeing to a truce, joined
the British and Americans who, by then, in accordance with prior plans, had
turned eastward from Algeria, entered Tunisia, and were driving toward
Bizerte and Tunis, their ultimate objectives . On the way they quickly ran into
opposition . Axis troops had entered Tunisia from Italy shortly after TORCH,
and eventually a field-army-size force, under General Juergen von Arnim,
built up an extended bridgehead covering Bizerte and Tunis in the northeastern
corner. Von Arnim sought to prevent the Allies from overrunning
Tunisia and also to permit Rommel's army to finish withdrawing from Libya
into southern Tunisia . The Axis would then hold the eastern seaboard of the
country . To guarantee their security on the eastern coastal plain, von Arnim
and Rommel needed to control the passes in the Eastern Dorsale, a mountain
range running generally north and south . Through that chain were four major
openings-Pichon and Fondouk in the north and Faid and Rebaou in the
south . Von Arnim seized Pichon in mid-December 1942 . Toward the end of
January 1943, as Rommel settled into the Mareth Line in southern Tunisia,
the Axis desire for the other passes initially spurred what developed into the
Battle of Kasserine Pass .
The Allies deployed in Tunisia with the bulk of their strength in the north . 67
Because of bad weather and supply deficiencies, Eisenhower on 24 December
called off the offensive toward Bizerte and Tunis . Early in January 1943, to
counter Rommel's growing presence, he began moving Fredendall's II Corps
headquarters and American units to southern Tunisia in order to buttress
poorly equipped French troops holding the Fondouk, Faid, and Rebaou
Passes and the town of Gafsa, an important road center .
Allied command lines were less than firm . General Sir Kenneth A . N .
Anderson, at the head of the British First Army-with the British V Corps,
several British divisions, and some American and French units in the north, was the overall tactical commander in Tunisia, but Americans found him
difficult to work with . Fredendall exacerbated the problem because he saw his
role as autonomous . The French, who had General Louis-Marie Koeltz's
XIX Corps in the center, a division in the north, another in the south, and
miscellaneous detachments scattered virtually everywhere, refused to serve
under direct British command . As a consequence, General Alphonse Juin,
commander of the French land and air forces in French Northwest Africa,
exercised loose direction and provided liaison and guidance to all French
formations .
Fredendall had small packets of troops dispersed over a very large areaone
battalion of the 1st Infantry Division at Gafsa, another blocking the
Fondouk road to Sbeitla, Combat Command A (CCA) of the 1st Armored
Division at Sbeitla, Combat Command B (CCB) near Tebessa . He could
bolster the French garrisons holding the Faid and Rebaou Passes, keep his
forces concentrated in a central location and ready to counterattack, or strike
toward the east coast to sever the contact between von Arnim's and Rommel's
armies . He sought to do the latter by raiding a small Italian detachment at
Sened on 24 January. The action was highly successful as a morale builder but
had no real result except to squander Fredendall's meager resources .
The Axis command correctly read the situation and continued planning
to take control of the Eastern Dorsale . Rommel established his headquarters
in southern Tunisia on 26 January, and two days later Comando Supremo in
Rome approved a cautious push to take the Fondouk and Faid Passes and to
advance on Gafsa. With Rommel's 10th and 21st Panzer Divisions temporarily
under von Arnim's control, von Arnim attacked on 30 January to open the
Battle of Kasserine Pass . Just before dawn, thirty tanks struck 1,000 French
troops in the Faid Pass while another contingent of German tanks, infantry,
and artillery drove through the Rebaou defile ten miles to the south, overran
several hundred French defenders, and came up behind the French holding
Faid . Encircled and outnumbered, the French fought gallantly for more than
twenty-four hours until they were overwhelmed .
Five hours after the German attack started, Anderson instructed Fredendall
rather vaguely to restore the situation at Faid . Because Ward, the 1st
Armored Division commander, was at Gafsa supervising the Sened raid and
other useless actions, Fredendall communicated directly with the CCA
commander at Sbeitla, Brig . Gen . Raymond McQuillin, who was old in
appearance, mild in manner, and cautious in outlook . McQuillin sent out two
small reconnaissance units toward the Faid and Rebaou Passes to determine
what was happening . At noontime, even though the French at Faid were still
resisting,, the reconnaissance elements erroneously reported the Germans in
control at both passes . McQuillin decided to counterattack . As he moved his
assault forces forward, German planes bombed and attacked his units and
disrupted the advance . American aircraft dispatched to intercept the Germans
dropped bombs on the CCA command post by mistake, and American
antiaircraft gunners shot down an American plane . McQuillin then waited for
nightfall. During the hours of darkness, he pushed his forces about halfway to
Faid and Rebaou .
On the morning of 31 January, more than twenty-four hours after the
German attack, McQuillin committed a small-tank infantry force under Col .
Alexander N. Stark, Jr ., to strike to Faid and another such force under Col .
William B . Kern to go for Rebaou. Late getting under way, the effort was
badly coordinated and too weak to attain the objectives . Heavy German
defensive fires, together with effective bombing and strafing from the air,
knocked out several tanks and induced terror, indecision, and paralysis
among the American units . McQuillin's effort petered out . As Fredendall, the
II Corps commander, was thinking on 1 February of moving CCB from
Tebessa to Sbeitla, Anderson, the First British Army commander, instructed
him to dispatch CCB toward Fondouk, where von Arnim had struck Koeltz's
French elements, seized the pass, and threatened a serious penetration .
Fredendall complied . McQuillin tried again that day to reach Faid but failed
because, he said, of the disgraceful performance of Stark's infantry . Von
Arnim, now in control of the four major passes, called off further endeavor .
With the 10th Panzer Division at Fondouk and the 21st at Faid and Rebaou, von
Arnim, instead of returning both divisions to Rommel, hoped to keep them
for use in the north . The front in Tunisia now became quiet, and the first or
preliminary phase of what would develop into the Battle of Kasserine Pass
ended .
On the Allied side, Eisenhower questioned Fredendall's competence,
Anderson doubted the battleworthiness of American troops, Fredendall
wondered whether Ward was proficient, McQuillin castigated Stark, and so it
went down the line . American ineptitude and failure to rescue the French
defenders at Faid had shocked the French . Additional American units-parts
of Maj . Gen . Terry Allen's 1st Infantry Division and of Ryder's 34th
Division-moved into southern Tunisia but they were split into small parcels
and physically separated . During the second week of February, Fredendall's
combat units were deployed as follows : At the front, in blocking positions on
two hills covering the roads west from Faid and Rebaou to Sidi bou Zid and
Sbeitla were two forces . On the hill called Djebel Lessouda north of the Faid
road was Lt . Col. John K. Waters of the 1st Armored Division . He
commanded about 900 troops-a company of fifteen tanks, some reconnaissance
elements, a tank-destroyer platoon, and a battery of self-propelled 105-
mm howitzers-as well as the 2d Battalion (less a rifle company) of the 168th
Infantry. In support of Waters, Lt . Col . Louis Hightower, a few miles away at
the village of Sidi bou Zid, commanded fifty-one tanks, twelve tank destroyers,
and two artillery battalions of the 1st Armored Division .
On Djebel Ksaira, overlooking the road from Rebaou, was Col . Thomas
D. Drake, who had taken command of the 168th Infantry in January. He had
about 1,000 men of the 3d Battalion (plus a rifle company of the 2d) of the
168th, plus 650 miscellaneous troops-a medical detachment, the regimental
band, 200 engineers, an attached cannon company, several antiaircraft guns,
and a few artillery pieces . Supporting Drake was the Reconnaissance
Battalion of the 1st Armored Division near Sidi bou Zid . Drake received 200
replacement troops on 12 February, but some lacked weapons, quite a few had
never fired a rifle, and none had entrenching tools or bayonets . On the
following day, Drake accepted several truckloads of brand-new bazookas ; no
one on the hill had ever fired this antitank weapon, and Drake planned to
figure out how to operate them and to start a training program on 14
February. Behind and west of Waters and Drake were elements of McQuillin's
CCA at Sbeitla and Sidi bou Zid. Ward had his division reserve at
Sbeitla, a battalion of infantry under Kern, a battalion of tanks, and a
company of tank destroyers . CCB was near Fondouk, 100 miles from Sbeitla ;
Col. Robert I . Stack's Combat Command C (CCC), consisting primarily of
the 6th Armored Infantry, was twenty miles away in the same direction .
West of Sbeitla, Stark's 26th Infantry of the 1st Infantry Division and a
1st Armored Division tank battalion under Col . Ben Crosby were at Feriana
guarding the road from Gafsa and protecting the airfields at Thelepte, but
who controlled them was unclear . Arriving at Gafsa to augment French units
presumably under Fredendall's command were a U .S . Ranger battalion,
some artillery and tank-destroyer units, plus about a battalion of the 1st
Derbyshire Yeomanry, a British armored-car ,regiment dispatched by Anderson
to bolster the inexperienced Americans ., Fredendall's II Corps reserve
consisted of several artillery and tank-destroyer battalions near Tebessa,
where the corps headquarters was located, plus the 1st Battalion, 168th
Infantry.
Ultra-secret intercepts indicated an apparent enemy plan to strike
through Fondouk to destroy the French in the center of the Allied front, then
to turn north and rip into the British flank . Although other sources of
intelligence pointed to Axis offensive preparations in the south, Eisenhower's
G-2 at AFHQ a British officer, as well as Anderson, became convinced of an
imminent Axis thrust in the north . To preserve these positions, which pointed
toward Bizerte and Tunis, Anderson instructed Fredendall to be ready to
abandon Gafsa in the south . Together with Koeltz, Fredendall was to prepare
to withdraw about fifty miles to the Western Dorsale and there to plug the
passes, especially the two important defiles at Kasserine and Sbiba . Contrary
to Allied expectations, Kesselring, von Arnim, and Rommel, with Comando
Supremo; approval, decided to launch two attacks, both in the south . Von
Arnim was to head for Sidi bou Zid, Rommel for Gafsa. The concept,
however, was somewhat fuzzy . Von Arnim wished simply to throw the Allies
off balance and to retain possession of the 10th and 21st Panzer Divisions.
Rommel hoped to recover control of his two panzer divisions and to go all the
way to Tebessa and, if possible, beyond . If the attacks went well, Kesselring
promised to give Rommel control of at least one of the panzer divisions and
permission to go as far as he could .
The second phase of the Kasserine battle started very early on the
morning of 14 February, before Drake could institute his bazooka-firing
training program on Djebel Ksaira . During a raging sandstorm, more than
200 German tanks, half-tracks, and guns of both panzer divisions came
through Faid . One task force swung around the northern side of Lessouda and
encircled the hill ; another swung around the southern side of Ksaira and
surrounded the height . Waters' and Drake's forces, Fredendall's blocking
positions, were thus marooned . A series of American mishaps, due largely to
inexperience, then permitted the Germans rather easy and quick success . The
bad weather relaxed the Americans' security arrangements, and they were
unable to react quickly and firmly . Until the storm lifted, men on the hill had
difficulty identifying the German elements and held their fire . At 0730, as the
weather cleared, McQuillin initiated planned countermeasures . He limply
told Hightower to clear up the situation . As Hightower prepared to drive to
Djebel Lessouda and relieve the American defenders, enemy aircraft struck
Sidi bou Zid and temporarily disrupted McQuillin's command post and
Hightower's preparations . Throughout the rest of the day, German planes
harassed the Americans . Despite repeated requests for air support, only one
flight of four American aircraft appeared briefly over the battlefield .
Hightower went into action with forty-seven tanks . Although outnumbered,
he fought bravely against the more effective German tanks . By midafternoon,
all but seven of his tanks had been destroyed . During the
engagement, some American artillerymen panicked and abandoned their
guns. The 1st Armored Division Reconnaissance Battalion, ready to rescue
Drake's men on Djebel Ksaira, was unable to even start its counterattack
because some of the German tanks surrounding Drake had thrust forward
toward Sidi bou Zid and captured a reconnaissance company . The rest of the
American reconnaissance units then pulled out and headed for Sbeitla .
With his command post in Sidi bou Zid directly threatened, McQuillin,
covered by Hightower's engagement, decided to withdraw to Sbeitla. He
phoned and asked Ward to provide a shield by blocking the main road from
Faid to Sbeitla . Ward sent Kern and his infantry battalion to take up defensive
positions eleven miles east of the town at a road intersection 'that became
known as Kern's Crossroads . Around noon, McQuillin started to move his
artillery units and command post out of Sidi bou Zid . German dive bombers
attacked them and prompted confusion . As a consequence, for several hours
McQuillin lost communications with his subordinate units . That afternoon a
swirling mass of American troops-McQuillin's command post, mis-
cellaneous elements, Hightower's remnants, artillery pieces, tank destroyers,
engineer trucks, and foot soldiers-fled toward Sbeitla. McQuillin reestablished
his command post there and began to assemble and reorganize his
units .
Initial estimates of losses on that day were shocking : 52 officers and more
than 1,500 men missing . The final numbers of casualties on 14 February were
much smaller : 6 killed, 32 wounded, and 134 missing . But between Faid and
Kern's Crossroads on the Sbeitla plain, forty-four tanks, fifty-nine half-tracks,
twenty-six artillery pieces, and at least two dozen trucks were wrecked,
burning, or abandoned . An artillery commander, Charles P . Summerall, Jr.,
took his men out during the night to recover guns, trucks, and ambulances ; on
the following morning, he had eight instead of his normal twenty-four
pieces-the others were lost-backing the troops at Kern's Crossroads .
30 January-22 February 1943
MARTIN BLUMENSON
Part I:
When World War II opened in Europe in September 1939, the U .S . Army
lacked the capacity to wage modern warfare . Although many dedicated
individual professional soldiers had during the 1920s and 1930s conscientiously
studied to be ready for the next war, decline, neglect, and stagnation
marked America's military forces . As the Army's strength decreased, its
potential to function decayed . Whether this "tragically insufficient" establishment
was capable of restoring itself quickly in a time of emergency became
questionable .' The Army, which had shrunk in size between 1919 and the
mid-1930s, was unable to absorb new techniques of waging war . Equipment
deteriorated continuously as World War I stocks were used up. Personnel
shortages brought Regular Army training to a standstill in 1934 . The Army
still "had ample time to rebuild itself, but no money." Without adequate
funds, raising a credible Army and concluding contracts for modern materiel
were impossible . Several years later, the Army received "more money, but
time . . . was lacking ." 2
Several circumstances accounted for the Army's weakness . Victory in
World War I had bred complacency and inhibited imaginative ideas and
experiments in doctrine, organization, and materiel . A revulsion against war
in general and disillusionment with World War I in particular, together with
faith in the oceans as bulwarks of protection, had prompted retreat into
national isolation and desire to avoid foreign entanglements . Because of the
great economic depression, congressional appropriations had dwindled, manpower
had declined, and the development and procurement of weapons and
equipment had languished. Even after World War II began in Europe, the
American public had remained lethargic toward military issues . A "large and
expensive combat-ready military structure" could not be supported, and "for
two decades after 1920 the Army and the National Guard together were quite
incapable of waging war ."3 As Japanese aggression in Asia and as German
and, to a lesser extent, Italian preparations for war and expansion in Europe
created international tensions, President . Franklin D . Roosevelt and Congress
gave some attention to military problems and allowed increased expenditures .
Yet General Malin Craig, the U .S. Army chief of staff, wondered whether a
renascence might be too late . In the summer of 1939, he warned that at least
two years were required to transform funds into military power . "Time is the
only thing," he said, "that may be irrevocably lost . " 4
At the outbreak of the war in Europe, the U .S. Army was still seriously
undermanned and underequipped, practiced obsolete procedures with outmoded
weapons, and from 1933 ranked seventeenth in size among the armies
of the world . The actual strength of the Regular Army in 1939 totaled fewer
than 190,000 troops, who were scattered, usually in battalions, among 130
posts, camps, and stations . Although Craig's successor, General George C .
Marshall, predicted the impossibility of expanding and modernizing the
establishment overnight, that was exactly what the Army would have to do .'
How well the Army had performed the task of rehabilitating itself would
become apparent in February 1943 during a series of engagements in Tunisia
that came to be known as the Battle of Kasserine Pass .
Rapid demobilization after World War I had left the Regular Army with
130,000 men on 1 January 1920 . 6 The National Defense Act of that year
authorized 280,000 active-duty soldiers, but Congress reduced the number to
150,00 regulars in 1922, to 135,000 in the following year, and to 118,750 in
1927 . The National Guard, with a ceiling of 450,000 members, rarely totaled
half that number, while about 100,000 officers, and men, receiving at best
indifferent attention, formed the Organized Reserve Corps . 7 Consisting of
110,000 men in 1936, the standing Army lacked'airplanes, tanks, combat and
scout cars, antiaircraft artillery guns, searchlights, fire-control equipment,
.50-caliber machine guns, and other vital materiel . The United States "on its
own initiative had rendered itself more impotent than Germany under the
military limitations of the Treaty of Versailles . "8 Authorized a 165,000-
member Regular Army in 1937, and a 210,000 level in 1939, the U .S . Army
was without a single division prepared for combat .
The experience of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) in France
in 1918, particularly the final phase, largely determined Army doctrine during
the interwar years, Offensive operations had featured large and heavy artillery
preparations, barrages timed to move forward on successive lines ahead of the
infantry assault, use of tanks to assist infantry through the barbed wire and
across enemy trenches, and massive advance of infantry to engage in hand-tohand
combat with the enemy . The National Defense Act of 1920 confirmed
refighting, "the old kind of war" in the future . 9 Proficiency in the rifle and
bayonet used in open and fluid rather than in static warfare and the efficacy of
the "headlong attack" were basic doctrinal beliefs . 10 Infantry advancing to"engage and destroy the enemy by physical encounter" was the key to victory
in battle . Despite the emergence of machine guns, automotive transportation,
tanks, planes, and other developments, the rifle remained the most important
weapon. Doctrine relegated aircraft, tanks, machine guns, and artillery to
employment as auxiliary arms for the infantry and at the same time
proclaimed adherence to offensive and aggressive tactics ."
Tanks had formed a separate component in the AEF, and four battalions,
all using French and British models, participated in battle, but the National
Defense Act of 1920 placed tanks under infantry control . This reinforced the
idea of gearing tanks' forward movement to the pace of the infantry soldier .
Tanks became in effect self-propelled artillery pieces to assist the infantry
advance . The Army built thirty-five between 1920 and 1935, most of them test
models, and the first standard model adopted in 1938 represented no doctrinal
change . Tanks continued as infantry-support weapons . 12 The horse cavalry
continued to have an eminent place in doctrine, not only for reconnaissance
and communications but more especially for pursuit . In search of traditional
mobility but prohibited from developing tanks, the cavalry experimented with
light armored cars but made little progress because of endemic penury and
meager manpower . 13 All the combat arms tried to gain mechanized vehiclesthose
used in combat-and motorized vehicles-those used for transportation-
but the efforts withered . Motorization for artillery was deemed to be
'`madness ." Attempts to organize and establish a mechanized force in 1928
and again in 1930-31 failed .'4
The Army Air Corps, practicing a variety of functions and missions,
turned increasingly to strategic bombardment and neglected close tactical
support of ground forces . "Air Corps infatuation with the heavy bomber and
strategic air power" resulted in "a reasonably good bomber . . . but no
similarly adequate fighters and attack planes to support surface battles ." 15
The doctrinal coordination of ground and air action was primitive . The
artillery gave thought to centralizing the control of gunfire, both for direct and
indirect firing, and also to the use of forward observers . Lack of resources,
particularly communications equipment and manpower, inhibited solid development
of these new techniques . 16 Except for conversations among thoughtful
officers and some small tactical experimentation in the field, doctrine remained
relatively unchanged between the wars . Lacking the means to try new
procedures, the Army kept alive its stress on offensive and aggressive
operations . As late as the summer of 1939, the Army was "still attuned to the
combat styles of 1918 ."17
1 Realistic exercises to train and test individual soldier, unit, and combined-
arms proficiency, to practice procedures in the field, to disseminate
knowledge, to stimulate air-ground cooperation, to give officers experience in
handling large organizations-in short, to achieve war readiness-were out of
the question for most of the interwar period because of the stringent economy
in defense expenditures, the low peacetime strengths of the Regular Army, the
National Guard, and the Organized Reserve Corps, and the dispersal of the
few divisions in existence . 18 In overseas posts-Hawaii, Panama, and the
Philippines-units could concentrate for periodic war games, but the three
regular infantry divisions in the continental United States were so scattered
that it was difficult and costly to bring together divisional components for
training . Not until the latter part of the 1930s did maneuvers involve at least a
corps headquarters and two or more divisions . 19 The imposition of nonmilitary
duties also detracted from serious attention to training . The Civilian
Conservation Corps (CCC), created in 1933 to give work to unemployed
young men, came under Army administration, and this responsibility diverted
officers and men from drill .20 Units of an under-strength National
Guard and members of the Organized Reserve Corps gathered once a week in
armories and spent two weeks of the summer in the field every year to work
with obsolete equipment in very short supply . The training was rudimentary .
The primary function of the National Guard was to be ready at the behest of
state governors to help maintain public order during natural disasters and
civil strife . While duty of this sort built unit cohesion, it was less than valuable
as wartime preparation .
The War Department created four field armies in 1932, and, although
they "existed only on paper, the department gave them primary responsibility
to train the units in their areas .21 Four years later, in 1936, no corps
headquarters troops and few army headquarters troops existed . As late as
1939, the First Army had two officers serving as permanent headquarters staff
members. No wonder that the First Army, in a major exercise in 1935, could
do no more than test the assembly of 36,000 troops . The Third Army staged
an exercise in 1938 involving 24,000 troops, and the outcome ; according to its
commander, proved the continuing usefulness of the horse cavalry . In 1939,
the First Army conducted a series of exercises for about 50,000 troops,
actually a collection of individual organizations without supporting units . At
23 percent of authorized war strength, the force had no 155-mm howitzers,
was short in antitank weapons, had on hand 6 percent of its infantry mortars,
33 percent of its machine guns, and 17 percent of its trucks . One river crossing
used up more than half the engineer pontoon equipment available to the entire
U.S. Army. The outcome of the maneuver, according to the commander,
proved the continuing, utility of the World War I square-type infantry
division . 22
That these exercises proved the validity of concepts already outmoded
indicated the nature of the maneuver problems and the methods in the field
for solving them . By 1939, the Army had virtually forgotten how to conduct
training on a broad scale . Very few officers could handle organizations larger
than a battalion . Advanced officers' courses in the branch schools were
generally stereotyped and routine, although the temporary association of
young officers, presumably the best of their generations, provoked discussion
among them and stimulated professional reading .23 The two-year course at
the Command and General Staff College stressed solving military problems by
the "school solution," and although the practice stifled initiative and
originality, it did produce officers who were "standard" in thought processes,
who were at home and at ease in any headquarters and unit . Early in the
postwar period, the college taught what was called the latest tactical doctrine
of World War I . New tactics and techniques of the separate arms, as well as of
the combined arms, found places in the curriculum by 1929, mechanization
and motorization were taught beginning in 1935, and the employment of the
mechanized division received attention in the following year, all on a highly
theoretical basis .24 The Army War College offered lectures by military and
civilian experts, expected students to read and to do research, and had them
solve more or less realistic problems derived from history and theory,
individually as well as by committee . The final exercise, visiting the principal
Civil War battlefields in Virginia and Pennsylvania in order to follow the
operations of the armies, corps, and divisions, indicated a persistent concern
with the past .
Standard weapons and equipment were of World War I vintage : the
Springfield Model 1903 rifle throughout the Army (although the M1 Garand
semiautomatic rifle was in limited production by 1939), the 75-mm and 155-
mm howitzers for the artillery ; the .50-caliber machine gun for antitank and
antiaircraft use (although the 37-mm gun was being produced by 1939), and
the Stokes three-inch trench mortar for the infantry (although 60-mm and 81-
mm mortars were being developed by 1939) . About a thousand tanks were left
over from World War I, and in 1934, only twelve postwar tanks were in
service . All the tanks on hand were lightly armed and armored . Walter
Christie built a tank with a new suspension system and with interchangeable
wheels and tracks, but the Army purchased only a few experimental models . 25
The organization of the War Department General Staff fostered compartmentalization
and inhibited the use of combined arms . Chiefs of infantry,
cavalry, and artillery presided over more or less autonomous branches and
discouraged interaction and mutual experimentation . The basic combat
organization was the infantry division, nonmotorized, structured as in World
War I with two brigades, each of two regiments of four battalions each .
Toward the end of the 1930s, some students and faculty membefs at the Army
War College recommended reducing the size of the division in order to
enhance mobility and flexibility . At least one student committee suggested
abolishing the brigade level of command . From 1936 on, Lesley J . McNair,
first at Fort Sill, later at Fort Leavenworth, worked out a blueprint to
streamline the square-type division to triangular shape, not only to attain
mobility and flexibility, but also to gain personnel for corps and army
headquarters troops and support units . Nothing would come of this before
1939 .`
A start toward mechanization occurred in 1928 with the formation of an
experimental organization composed of two tank battalions, an armored
cavalry troop, an infantry battalion, an artillery battalion, engineer and signal
companies, a medical detachment, an ammunition train, and a squadron of
observation planes . The provisional force was broken up after three months
for lack of funds . While the infantry branch did little to further armored
warfare, the cavalry developed "combat cars (light tanks) and in 1932
activated the 7th Cavalry Brigade (Mechanized) . 26 In the summer of 1939,
the combat forces of the U .S . Army consisted of three embryonic infantry
divisions at half strength and six others consisting of skeleton cadres; two
cavalry divisions, each totaling about 1,200 men ; the 7th Cavalry Brigade
(Mechanized) at half strength ; several assorted regiments ; and 17,000 airmen
using obsolete planes . 27
The U.S . Army chiefs of staff in the 1920s and 1930s-Generals Peyton
March, John J . Pershing, John Hines, Charles P . Summerall, Jr., Douglas
MacArthur, and Malin Craig-struggled to modernize the Army. Their
efforts were in vain because of the lack of general public interest and the
scarcity of funds . On the intermediate and lower levels, military life during
the greater part of the interwar period was generally one of stultification . The
prerogative of seniority brought older officers to important positions, and
many lacked energy and stamina, looked with satisfaction on the achievements
of World War I, and were cautious and conservative in their outlook .
Yet a group of younger professionals was studying the art of war, reading
military journals and books, and seeking to prepare themselves for combat ; a
surprising number would attain prominence in positions of great responsibility
during World War II . It was a wonder that these officers serving "in the
dullness of a skeletonized army" emerged in the 1940s as brilliant administrators
and leaders . 28
The state of affairs on the other side was quite different . The Germans
after World War I, restricted by the Treaty of Versailles to an army of 100,000
men, turned this force into a professional cadre capable of quick expansion in
time of war. Seeking military reasons for their defeat, maintaining their
tradition of studying the lessons of the past to apply them to the future, and
determined to be ready for modern warfare, the Germans, who had had but a
few tanks in the Gteat War, restored mobility to the battlefield . They
developed armored warfare according to the precepts of J . F. C . Fuller and B .
H . Liddell Hart and created a doctrine of blitzkrieg (lightning war) founded on
the principles of the so-called Hutier tactics, that is, to exploit quickly penetra-
' The 2d Infantry Division was triangularized in 1937 for field tests, but on completion of the
exercises it returned to its original organization .
tions of the enemy line by avoiding centers of resistance and striking deeply
into the rear in order to paralyze communications . Civil flying and glider
enthusiasts formed nuclei for a resuscitated air force, which concentrated on
lending close tactical support to the ground forces .
The rise to power of Adolf Hitler in 1933 gave immediacy to a wellintegrated
program of militarization beyond Versailles Treaty limits . A
gigantic industrial renascence, in large part intended to overcome economic
depression, provided weapons and equipment for an army increasing in
numbers and in skill . By 1936, the German Army and Air Force were strong
and well trained ; intervention in the Spanish Civil War tested doctrine,
weapons, equipment, and organization and gave experience to those who took
part . The apparently united will of the German people to restore the former
power of Germany complemented astounding progress in the art of war .
Although German military leaders felt themselves unready for general war
before 1942, the successes of Hitler's diplomacy in the 1930s-in the
Rhineland, Austria, and Czechoslovakia-stilled their reservations . German
victories in Poland, Denmark, Norway, and Western Europe in 1939 and
1940 were astonishing. The German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941,
although promising quick success, bogged down because of the enormous
distances, contradictory objectives, and, eventually, the winter weather .
The Italians shared with Benito Mussolini dreams of restoring the glory
of ancient Rome . Although the Italian ground forces succeeded in Ethiopia
against a primitive foe, Italian participation in the Spanish Civil War and the
later 1941 thrust from Albania into Greece showed deficiencies in organization,
weapons, equipment, and leadership, perhaps partially the result of a
lack of the natural resources, particularly oil, required for modern war . A few
elite units were first rate, but many Italian formations reflected the general
corruption of the state system . The Italian Army in North Africa, specifically
in Libya, had light, under-powered tanks and trucks, World War I artillery
pieces, old-fashioned antitank and antiaircraft guns, and obsolete rifles and
machine guns .29
The Germans and Italians fought a coalition war under the disadvantageous
lack of a coalition machinery to translate policy on the highest level
into strategy. The two allies cooperated through loosely organized, complicated,
and often poorly defined and ineffective diplomatic .and special liaison
arrangements . Although the two dictators, Hitler and Mussolipi, occasionally
met, they fought parallel wars . German aid, in the form of troops, weapons,
equipment, supplies, and leadership, was necessary to sustain the Italian
effort, and this bred German feelings of superiority, disdain, even contempt
for Italy as well as an Italian sense of inferiority and jealousy . The Axis war
was poorly directed, and the inability to synchronize activities was made
evident in the Battle of Kasserine Pass .
On 1 September 1939, on the same day that Germany invaded Poland, Gen .
George C. Marshall became U .S. Army Chief of Staff . 30 He immediately
implemented policies to retire older officers, reassign those who were incompetent,
and bring younger and more energetic men to responsible positions, 31
A week after the German invasion, President Roosevelt raised the authorized
strength of the Regular Army to 227,000 men and the National Guard to
235,000 and permitted members of the Organized Reserve Corps to volunteer
for active duty . The War Department that fall, in accordance with McNair's
plans, reduced the size of the infantry division and reorganized it from a
square to a triangular type, giving it three infantry regiments consisting of
three battalions each, The gain in manpower as a result of triangularization,
as well as the influx of men into the Regular Army and National Guard,
enabled the War Department to hold genuine corps and army maneuvers in
the spring of 1940, the first full-fledged corps maneuvers since 1918 .
The task of attaining war preparedness began seriously in 1940 as larger
and more realistic exercises and maneuvers developed and refined new
doctrine, techniques, and equipment . In January 1940, the Fourth Army
Headquarters laid out an unprecedented amphibious exercise involving
Army, Navy, and Air Corps elements . Fourteen thousand participating troops
of the 3d Division moved by water from Tacoma, Washington, landed on the
shore of Monterey Bay, California, and "captured" San Francisco .32 Maneuvers
in Georgia and Louisiana in April and May 1940 tested new types of
corps headquarters directing triangular infantry divisions . At the same time,
the 7th Mechanized Cavalry Brigade and the infantry's Provisional
Motorized Tank Brigade came together to form an improvised armored
division . Recommendations from these exercises included combining the
regimental artillery battalions of an infantry division under the central control
of a division artillery, expanding the mechanized brigade into an armored
division, and creating a second armored division . 33
Spurring these developments was the phenomenal success of the German
blitzkrieg in France in May and June, which produced consternation, then
defeatism and apathy, in the War Department . How could the German tanks
be stopped? Marshall dispelled the gloom with two positive decisions . He
established the Armored Force, whose mission was to match the power of
German mobile forces . He directed his planners to provide antitank defense of
an offensive nature to halt the enemy's massed armor . 34
The Armored Force, under Brig . Gen . Adna R . Chaffee, came into
being in July 1940 . The I Armored Corps, with two divisions under its
command-the 1st at Fort Knox, Kentucky, the 2d at Fort Benning,
Georgia-supervised training . Both armored divisions were formed with a
reconnaissance battalion and an armored brigade, the latter consisting of two
regiments of light tanks armed with the 37-mm gun, a regiment of medium
tanks armed with the short-barreled 75-mm gun, an infantry regiment of two
battalions, a field-artillery regiment, plus an additional field-artillery battalion,
an engineer battalion, and signal, ordnance, quartermaster, and
medical units .35
,Activated on 15 July 1940 with Regular Army personnel later augmented
by draftees, the 1st Armored Division, which would see action in the Battle of
Kasserine Pass, pioneered the development of tank gunnery and used
forward-observer fire-direction techniques developed after World War I . By
1941, although shortages of all sorts existed-for example, only sixty-six
medium tanks produced in the United States were on hand-the 1st Armored
Division was able to participate in the Louisiana and Carolinas maneuvers .
The units engaged in simulated battle during daylight and night hours,
practiced maintenance, performed logistics and administration, and lived in
field conditions .36
Both armored divisions participated in the Louisiana maneuvers in
September 1941 . Involving 400,000 troops, pitting for the first time one field
army against another, featuring armored and paratroop forces, assembling
the unheard-of number of more than 1,000 aircraft, the exercises demonstrated
"an unusual amount of experimentation . "$7 The foremost purposes
were to fight large-unit battles, to test motorized and mechanized techniques,
to foster air-ground cooperation, and to practice medical evacuation, demolitions,
reconnaissance, and intelligence . 38 In the Carolinas in October and
November, the training exercises were a major test of the 1st and 2d Armored
Divisions . A total of 865 tanks and armored scout cars opposed 4,320 guns
effective against tanks . The results were inconclusive, and no firm doctrine
could be enunciated and written, mainly because of shortages in authorized
strength and weapons in all the participating units . Missing were 10 percent of
the mortars, 40 percent of the 37-mm guns, 18 percent of the 155-mm
howitzers, and 87 percent of the .50-caliber machine guns . 39
Clearly, features of the armored division required modification . When
Chaffee took ill, Lt . Gen . Jacob L . Devers replaced him as chief of the
Armored Force on 1 August 1941 . An artilleryman, Devers improved
firepower . Maj . Gen . George S . Patton, Jr ., commanding the I Armored
Corps, stressed mobility . Together they gave the armored divisions better
balance .40 On 1 March 1942, as Maj . Gen . Orlando Ward, who had
commanded the 1st Armored Brigade in the Louisiana and Carolinas
maneuvers, took command of the 1st Armored Division, a drastic reorganization
of the Armored Division was under way . In order to gain flexibility, the
brigade headquarters was eliminated and replaced by two combat commands .
Each combat command had its own intelligence and operations capabilities
but depended on the division for logistics and administration . Three separate
self-propelled field-artillery battalions operated under the division artillery .
The division trains controlled the service elements . A higher proportion of
infantry to tanks was achieved by increasing the number of battalions in the
infantry regiment to three and by reducing the number of tank regiments
from three to two regiments of three battalions each . A total of 14,620 troops
manned the division, which was equipped with .30-caliber carbines, selfpropelled
and towed antitank guns, self-propelled assault guns, .30- and .50-
caliber machine guns, 105-mm self-propelled howitzers, 60-mm and 81-mm
mortars, light and medium tanks, armored and scout cars, and half-tracks .
Unfortunately, much equipment was lacking .41
Before the 1st Armored Division could train in its new form, it received a
massive infusion of recently inducted replacement troops, bringing the
division to authorized strength, and went to Fort Dix in April 1942 for
shipment overseas . Overage officers were relieved and replaced, and the
division sailed for Northern Ireland in May, and trained there for five months .
The stress was on small-unit training and gunnery . The work improved tankartillery
cooperation, but tank-infantry and air-ground cooperation remained
weak. 42
In November 1942, the 1st Armored Division embarked in ships again,
this time for a voyage to North Africa and the eventual engagement of
Kasserine Pass . It would go into battle with two battalions of light tanks armed
with the 37-mm gun, three battalions of medium tanks armed with the lowvelocity
75-mm gun, and one battalion of early-model Sherman medium
tanks . The "relative weakness in armor and fire power when compared with
the German tanks was not suspected until they met in Tunisia ." 43
To stop German massed armor, the War Department created the tank
destroyer, so named to connote offensive and aggressive characteristics as
opposed to the defensive and passive meaning of, "antitank . " A "marriage of
the artillery gun to truck and tractor," the tank destroyer was to embody an
aggressive spirit and to destroy enemy tanks by maneuver and fire . 44 To
create an ideal tank destroyer with mobility and punch, quickly and easily
fired and giving the crew protection against small-arms fire, was a difficult
task . From a 37-mm gun mounted on a quarter-ton truck or jeep, the tank
destroyer evolved to a 57-mm then 75-mm, 76-mm, and finally 90-mm gun
mounted on a carriage resembling a tank .
During maneuvers in August 1940, the employment of antitank guns,
manned by antitank companies in the infantry regiments, was passive ; they
were deployed in cordon defense . A year later, bringing the companies
together under central control proved a more satisfactory practice for
offensive, aggressive movements in large-scale exercises . Yet observers noted
tendencies to commit the guns prematurely and to fragment their strength . In
November 1941, the War Department projected activating fifty-three tankdestroyer
battalions, and a month later, eight infantry antitank battalions
were redesignated tank-destroyer battalions . Tank destroyers became a
provisional branch with a Tactical and Firing Center to supervise organization
and training. Not until August 1942 when Camp Hood, Texas, opened,
did a thoroughly rounded program begin . A tank-destroyer field manual
published in June 1942 developed the motto "Seek, Strike, Destroy." The
first officers candidate class graduated in October. By then, tank-destroyer
battalions were attached and later assigned to divisions . The War Department
planned to activate a total of 222 battalions .
The antitank rocket launcher called the bazooka, a grenade with a new
tail assembly, came into existence in mid-1942 . It was recommended for issue
to tank-destroyer battalions . Training in its use started in December 1942.
That was too late for the units already overseas, and bazookas were issued to
troops already in Tunisia and to soldiers aboard ships . However, no one really
knew how to operate and employ them . 45
By far the most important entity dealing with mobilization, organization,
and training came into being in July 1940 . This was General Headquarters,
U.S . Army, known as GHQ modeled on Pershing's AEF headquarters . U .S.
Army Chief of Staff Marshall named Brigadier General McNair, then
commandant of the Command and General Staff College, to be his chief of
staff at GHQ and gave him a free hand to fashion the combat units into a
proficient fighting force . GHQ was inserted structurally between the War
Department General Staff and the four field armies, which had formerly
conducted training . Although army commanders were initially reluctant to
relinquish their training function, McNair quickly established a standard
system progressive in nature, that is, a regular training cycle from the recruit
through the unit to combined-arms teams .
After the German spring campaigns in Denmark and Western Europe in
1940, the president raised the Regular Army to 280,000 men, then to
375,000 . In September, authorized to do so by the Congress, he enlarged the
Regular Army to 500,000 troops and called the 270,000 men of the National
Guard into active federal service for a year . The Selective Service Act in the
same month permitted the induction of 630,000 draftees into uniform . This
gave the Army a strength of 1 .4 million troops . 46 The absence of sufficient
housing, mess, and training facilities in the camps, posts, and stations made it
impossible to transfer the eighteen National Guard divisions to federal status
at once, and they came on active duty over the space of a year. By mid-1941,
almost ,1 .5 million men had been mobilized, assigned to units, and were
engaged in all forms of training .47 The National Guard divisions were
restructured into triangular shape and brought to full authorized strength .
Commanders and staff officers who owed their appointments'to state politics
and who were less than qualified on grounds of military education or physical
conditioning were removed and replaced by Regular Army officers . Complicating
the massive mobilization and training experience were the activation
of new divisions and other units, revisions in tables of organization and
equipment, the adoption of newly developed weapons-examples were the
tank destroyers, the replacement beginning in 1940 of World War I-type 3
inch mortars by the 60-mm and 81-mm mortars, the issue of the M1
semiautomatic Garand rifle after 1941-and the acceptance of new combat
doctrine . That the entire process did not collapse into chaos bordered on the
miraculous .48
McNair set into motion, inspected, and critiqued a variety of exercises to
test proficiency and identify failures in the training programs . For example,
the critique of a First Army maneuver in August 1940 noted such important
errors as improper use of combat teams and motor transportation, inability to
reconnoiter and maintain contact between adjacent units, and deficiencies in
signal communication, antitank guns, ammunition supply, and medical
evacuation . All National Guard units, in particular, reflected inadequate
training . Many officers and men were physically soft and undisciplined ; many
headquarters, particularly signal, military police, ordnance, engineer, and
medical, were nonexistent ; and weapons and equipment were in extremely
short supply . GHQ maneuvers in Tennessee in early 1941 showed the troops
still road bound, ignorant of field manuals, unable to reconnoiter properly,
and generally deficient in basic- and small-unit training ; leadership was weak
and unable to coordinate with adjacent and supporting units and with units of
other branches .49
The apex of McNair's training efforts came at the Louisiana and
Carolinas maneuvers in 1941 . Testing army aviation, GHQ found it poorly
coordinated with ground action . Ground troops underestimated air potential,
were weak in liaison and communications, had inadequate combat intelligence,
and were guilty of dispersed and fragmented efforts . There was a
general lack of discipline, an unwillingness to move off the roads, and a
reluctance to break column formations . 50 Yet the results of the Louisiana
maneuvers of 1941 confirmed "the soundness of existing policies ." 51 The
major lesson of the Carolinas maneuvers was "the crying need for infantry
support, both within the [armored] division and between infantry and
armored divisions . " 52 Both maneuvers accelerated the creation of independent
tank battalions to work with infantry . A light plane, the Cub, for artillery
spotting began to be built in 1942 . What no one seemed to notice was how the
air service had thwarted the War Department's efforts to create air support of
ground forces . No procedures or command relationships existed for largescale
air-ground operations . 53
At the end of November 1941, just a few days before the Japanese
bombed Pearl Harbor and brought the United States into the war, McNair
judged whether the troops were ready for combat. They "could fight
effectively," he said, but "losses would be unduly heavy." Against the
Germans, he added prophetically, the results "might not be all that could be
desired." 54 There had simply not been enough time for training . At the time
of Pearl Harbor, 1,638,000 men were in Army uniform, but only a single
division and a single antiaircraft artillery regiment were on full war footing .
"Though a large Army was not ready for combat . . . the United States
entered the war . . . with a training program carefully thought out and in full
operation ."56 GHQ training principles included progression through a fourphase
sequence, tests in each phase, unit training with frequent review, free
maneuvers, immediate critiques, the goal of general combat proficiency,
integration of the tactical units, a stress on the responsibilities of commanding
officers at all levels, and an emphasis on battle realism . 57 In line with the last
principle, GHQ established the Desert Training Center in California and
Arizona early in 1942 . There, in a primitive environment, troops lived,
moved, and fought under simulated battle conditions . 58
Beginning in December 1940, the War Department abolished the
traditional two-year course at Leavenworth and instead offered short, special,
and refresher instruction to selected commanders and staff officers who were
scheduled to assume positions of major responsibility in new units . The Army
discontinued the War College course and assigned faculty and staff members
to the War Plans Division of the War Department General Staff and
elsewhere . 59 GHQ itself went out of existence in March 1942 . The War
Department abolished the branch chiefs and formed the Army Ground Forces
under McNair to continue training combat forces . Earlier maneuvers had
focused on testing equipment and training, but large-scale exercises in 1942
tested doctrine, particularly infantry-armor coordination, which improved,
and air-ground cooperation, which remained disappointing .60 Unfortunately,
the two major units that would fight at Kasserine Pass, the 1st Armored
Division and the 34th Infantry Division, did not take part in the 1942
exercises, for they were in Northern Ireland . As late as July 1942, the 1st
Armored Division was still awaiting delivery of much equipment, and the 34th
Division, which had just started training for amphibious landing, had few
antiaircraft guns and no tanks . 61 The tank destroyers with these divisions had
light 37-mm guns and light armored cars . Antiaircraft artillery units were
shipped overseas after attaining only "minimum proficiency in their weapons
and before receiving combat training with other ground arms or with
aviation ." Because of the wide dispersion . of training centers and the
insufficiency of planes to tow targets for firing practice, antiaircraft personnel
were quite simply "improperly trained," 62
The 34th Infantry Division, the first American division to go to Europe,
originated in the National Guard . It was chosen for overseas service presumably
because it was deemed to be well trained . Among its major organic
components was the 168th Infantry regiment, which had had a typical prewar
military upbringing and would be involved in the Battle of Kasserine Pass .63
The 168th had participated as an Iowa volunteer unit in the Civil War,
specifically in Grant's campaign against Vicksburg and in the later movement
of the Union Army through the Carolinas . Mobilized again in 1917, the
regiment fought in France as part of the 42d Rainbow Division . Members in
the 1920s and 1930s were proud of the unit's combat history and had a special
feeling of cohesion . Of northern European stock, the men were from the towns
of Atlantic, Council Bluffs, Glenwood, Red Oak, Villisca, Shenandoah, and
Carlinda, agricultural communities in the gently rolling hill country of
southwestern Iowa . In these towns, citizens had purchased shares to construct
armories for the companies of the regiment, and the state government paid
rent to the owners. An armory contained offices, a drill hall resembling a
basketball court, supply rooms, and facilities for reunions, dances, banquets,
and patriotic celebrations .
Guardsmen were, for the most part, unmarried men from eighteen to
thirty-five years of age . They received one dollar for attending a training
session, and the pay was important in attracting members during the
Depression . They met every Monday evening and practiced close-order drill
and the manual of arms . They occasionally performed small-unit maneuvers
on a football field or in a city square . They received summer training at Camp
Dodge, Iowa . The annual inspection in each armory was usually linked to a
military ball, the highlight of the social season . Maj . Walter Smith inspected
the southwestern Iowa units in 1939 and called them a "very very fine
organization ." Other regiments in northern and northwestern Iowa, in
Minnesota, and in North Dakota came together with the 168th to form the
34th Division, commanded in 1939 by Maj . Gen. E. A. Walsh of Minneapolis
. In the summer of 1940, the division trained at Camp Ripley,
Wisconsin . Upon the -troops' return to their armories, revised National Guard
programs and schedules doubled their training time . The average guardsman
in the 168th had eighteen months of service . Two-thirds were high school
graduates; about one-third had some education beyond high school . Captains
were between thirty-four and forty-five years of age, and many of them, and
more senior officers, had served in World War I . Quite a few men joined the
regiment in 1941 to avoid the draft .
The 34th Division was called into active federal service in February 1941 .
On 2 March, the men of the 168th Infantry had farewell dinners in the
armories in their home towns, paraded, then marched to the train stations .
They traveled to Camp Claiborne, Louisiana, which was still under construction
. Living in tents, the men engaged in close-order drill and small-unit
tactics, including night attacks . Some went to schools for special training .
Equipment and weapons were in such short supply that stovepipes simulated
mortars, trucks carried signs to denote their use as tanks, and broomsticks
served as rifles . The heaviest infantry weapon was the 37-mm gun . In April,
draftees from all over the country arrived to bring the 34th Division regiments
up to strength . The division participated in two maneuvers in Louisiana in
June and August.64 A Regular Army officer, Maj . Gen . Russell P . Hartle,
took command in August . In January 1942, when Hartle assumed command
of the V Corps, Maj . Gen. Charles W . Ryder, a West Point graduate,
succeeded him as division commander, and the division sailed for Northern
Ireland. The following month, the division was triangularized . The men
continued training, practicing amphibious landings in Scotland later that
year.
In November, the division participated in the North African invasion,
coming ashore near Algiers . Of the soldiers then constituting the 168th
Infantry, about 30 percent were from the local armories in southwestern Iowa .
Two hundred of these men were reported missing in action on 17 February
1943, a day of severe fighting during the Battle of Kasserine Pass .
In summary, the entire mobilization process, including the organization
and training of the U .S . Army, was hasty, largely improvised, and saved from
disaster by the stability and intelligence of leaders like Marshall and McNair .
This crash program gave the field forces a semblance of preparedness . Yet
maneuvers revealed many deficiences in basic soldiering skills and, among a
large proportion of officers, basic command skills . Shortages of weapons and
equipment and the need to improvise had hampered instruction . There was
insufficient time to permit individuals and units to acquire and become
proficient in the doctrine, weapons and equipment, and skills required for the
modern warfare of the 1940s . Organizations and men were still largely in tune
with the time and space factors that had prevailed in the previous war, They
had yet to adjust to the accelerated tempo and increased distances of the
battlefield-in particular, the necessary speed of reaction so well understood
by their adversaries . American leadership and manpower had the potential to
excel, but it would take the reality and the adversity of Kasserine Pass to
develop an inherent capacity for excellence .
Deployment of American forces began shortly after Pearl Harbor, when
Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston S . Churchill confirmed a
strategy unofficially reached during Anglo-American staff conversations in
1941 . The Allied leaders endorsed a Europe-first endeavor and established
machinery to direct the coalition military effort .65 The president and prime
minister worked through the British Chiefs of Staff and the American Joint
Chiefs of Staff sitting together to form the Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS) .
The CCS issued directives to the theater commanders who were supreme
Allied commanders or Allied comanders in chief-the terms were interchangeable-
and who would exercise a unified command over the forces of
both nations .
American strategists generally favored a massive blojv against the
German-occupied continent of Europe and a direct thrust into Germany. To
these ends, the 34th Infantry Division, the 1st Armored Division, and later
the 1st Infantry Division went to Northern Ireland, where they trained under
the V Corps headquarters . The European Theater of Operations, U .S . Army,
under General Eisenhower provided overall direction, and the II Corps
headquarters under Lt . Gen. Mark W . Clark, who had been McNair's closest
associate, served as the theater training command . The British preferred an
invasion of French Northwest Africa, where German and Italian troops were
absent as a result of the armistice terms of 1940. The French had pledged to
resist invasion, but if, as the Allies hoped, they quickly came over to the Allied
side, they would offer only brief resistance to the untried Americans . The
landings in the French territories would also threaten the Axis forces based in
Libya and fighting the British in Egypt .
North Africa became an active theater of operations in 1940 when Italian
forces attacked the British . The ensuing campaigns were of a seesaw nature,
with first one opponent, then the other achieving temporary success . In 1941,
to help Mussolini, Hitler sent General Erwin Rommel'sAfrika Korps of several
German divisions to North Africa . Subsequently, Rommel took command of
Panzer Grupp Afrika, which consisted of the Afrika Korps augmented by several
mobile Italian divisions; in 1942, he took charge of Panzerarmee Afrika, all the
German and Italian combat units . Mussolini and his Comando Supremo directed
the operations in North Africa through an Italian theater commander, To
facilitate Rommel's access to the German high command and to smooth Italo-
German coordination, Hitler dispatched Field Marshall Albert Kesselring to
Rome . At first commander of the German air forces in Italy, Kesselring was
the ranking German officer in the Mediterranean area and, as such, virtually
a theater commander. With Kesselring's support, Rommel attacked in May
1942 . By June, he was at El Alamein, Egypt, sixty miles short of the Nile .
This was the situation in mid-1942 when Roosevelt accepted Churchill's
suggestion to invade French Northwest Africa . Eisenhower, named Supreme
Allied Commander, and Clark, his deputy, formed a new Allied Force
Headquarters (AFHQ) in London and began to plan landings, code-named
TORCH, on the shores of Morocco and Algeria .
In August 1942, Rommel attacked from El Alamein only to be stopped
by General Sir Harold Alexander, commander of the British Middle East
Forces with headquarters in Cairo, and General Sir Bernard E . Montgomery,
commanding the British Eighth Army in Egypt . After receiving 300 brandnew
American Sherman tanks, the British took the offensive on 23 October
and forced Rommel to withdraw . As the British pursued, Rommel conducted
a retrograde movement across Libya . During that retreat, TORCH was
launched. The invasion took place on 8 November 1942 . A task force under
Ryder and consisting of the 34th Division, part of the 1st Armored Division,
and British elements made the easternmost landing near Algiers, where
fighting ended on the first day . Another task force under Maj . Gen . Lloyd R .
Fredendall's II Corps and containing the 1st Infantry Division and British
units invaded in the center near Oran, where combat terminated on the
second day. A wholly American task under Patton, sailing directly from the
United States, landed in the west near Casablanca and battled French forces
vigorously for three days .
These events introduced American troops to combat on the Atlantic side
of World War II . But this hardly constituted the first battle, for the French
were not the enemy. Most French commanders and units offered reluctant
opposition . French organization, doctrine, and war materiel had not been
updated since 1940 . Curiously, resistance met by the Americans had been
more intense and of longer duration in Morocco . The future participants in
the Battle of Kasserine Pass were those who had engaged in almost no active
operations . They saw their performance against the French as more than
adequate for success against the Germans and Italians . Confident of their
underpowered light tanks with 37-mm guns, trusting the power of the 57-mm
and 75-mm guns on their Shermans, they believed themselves to be blooded
and tried in action .66
The French authorities in North Africa, after agreeing to a truce, joined
the British and Americans who, by then, in accordance with prior plans, had
turned eastward from Algeria, entered Tunisia, and were driving toward
Bizerte and Tunis, their ultimate objectives . On the way they quickly ran into
opposition . Axis troops had entered Tunisia from Italy shortly after TORCH,
and eventually a field-army-size force, under General Juergen von Arnim,
built up an extended bridgehead covering Bizerte and Tunis in the northeastern
corner. Von Arnim sought to prevent the Allies from overrunning
Tunisia and also to permit Rommel's army to finish withdrawing from Libya
into southern Tunisia . The Axis would then hold the eastern seaboard of the
country . To guarantee their security on the eastern coastal plain, von Arnim
and Rommel needed to control the passes in the Eastern Dorsale, a mountain
range running generally north and south . Through that chain were four major
openings-Pichon and Fondouk in the north and Faid and Rebaou in the
south . Von Arnim seized Pichon in mid-December 1942 . Toward the end of
January 1943, as Rommel settled into the Mareth Line in southern Tunisia,
the Axis desire for the other passes initially spurred what developed into the
Battle of Kasserine Pass .
The Allies deployed in Tunisia with the bulk of their strength in the north . 67
Because of bad weather and supply deficiencies, Eisenhower on 24 December
called off the offensive toward Bizerte and Tunis . Early in January 1943, to
counter Rommel's growing presence, he began moving Fredendall's II Corps
headquarters and American units to southern Tunisia in order to buttress
poorly equipped French troops holding the Fondouk, Faid, and Rebaou
Passes and the town of Gafsa, an important road center .
Allied command lines were less than firm . General Sir Kenneth A . N .
Anderson, at the head of the British First Army-with the British V Corps,
several British divisions, and some American and French units in the north, was the overall tactical commander in Tunisia, but Americans found him
difficult to work with . Fredendall exacerbated the problem because he saw his
role as autonomous . The French, who had General Louis-Marie Koeltz's
XIX Corps in the center, a division in the north, another in the south, and
miscellaneous detachments scattered virtually everywhere, refused to serve
under direct British command . As a consequence, General Alphonse Juin,
commander of the French land and air forces in French Northwest Africa,
exercised loose direction and provided liaison and guidance to all French
formations .
Fredendall had small packets of troops dispersed over a very large areaone
battalion of the 1st Infantry Division at Gafsa, another blocking the
Fondouk road to Sbeitla, Combat Command A (CCA) of the 1st Armored
Division at Sbeitla, Combat Command B (CCB) near Tebessa . He could
bolster the French garrisons holding the Faid and Rebaou Passes, keep his
forces concentrated in a central location and ready to counterattack, or strike
toward the east coast to sever the contact between von Arnim's and Rommel's
armies . He sought to do the latter by raiding a small Italian detachment at
Sened on 24 January. The action was highly successful as a morale builder but
had no real result except to squander Fredendall's meager resources .
The Axis command correctly read the situation and continued planning
to take control of the Eastern Dorsale . Rommel established his headquarters
in southern Tunisia on 26 January, and two days later Comando Supremo in
Rome approved a cautious push to take the Fondouk and Faid Passes and to
advance on Gafsa. With Rommel's 10th and 21st Panzer Divisions temporarily
under von Arnim's control, von Arnim attacked on 30 January to open the
Battle of Kasserine Pass . Just before dawn, thirty tanks struck 1,000 French
troops in the Faid Pass while another contingent of German tanks, infantry,
and artillery drove through the Rebaou defile ten miles to the south, overran
several hundred French defenders, and came up behind the French holding
Faid . Encircled and outnumbered, the French fought gallantly for more than
twenty-four hours until they were overwhelmed .
Five hours after the German attack started, Anderson instructed Fredendall
rather vaguely to restore the situation at Faid . Because Ward, the 1st
Armored Division commander, was at Gafsa supervising the Sened raid and
other useless actions, Fredendall communicated directly with the CCA
commander at Sbeitla, Brig . Gen . Raymond McQuillin, who was old in
appearance, mild in manner, and cautious in outlook . McQuillin sent out two
small reconnaissance units toward the Faid and Rebaou Passes to determine
what was happening . At noontime, even though the French at Faid were still
resisting,, the reconnaissance elements erroneously reported the Germans in
control at both passes . McQuillin decided to counterattack . As he moved his
assault forces forward, German planes bombed and attacked his units and
disrupted the advance . American aircraft dispatched to intercept the Germans
dropped bombs on the CCA command post by mistake, and American
antiaircraft gunners shot down an American plane . McQuillin then waited for
nightfall. During the hours of darkness, he pushed his forces about halfway to
Faid and Rebaou .
On the morning of 31 January, more than twenty-four hours after the
German attack, McQuillin committed a small-tank infantry force under Col .
Alexander N. Stark, Jr ., to strike to Faid and another such force under Col .
William B . Kern to go for Rebaou. Late getting under way, the effort was
badly coordinated and too weak to attain the objectives . Heavy German
defensive fires, together with effective bombing and strafing from the air,
knocked out several tanks and induced terror, indecision, and paralysis
among the American units . McQuillin's effort petered out . As Fredendall, the
II Corps commander, was thinking on 1 February of moving CCB from
Tebessa to Sbeitla, Anderson, the First British Army commander, instructed
him to dispatch CCB toward Fondouk, where von Arnim had struck Koeltz's
French elements, seized the pass, and threatened a serious penetration .
Fredendall complied . McQuillin tried again that day to reach Faid but failed
because, he said, of the disgraceful performance of Stark's infantry . Von
Arnim, now in control of the four major passes, called off further endeavor .
With the 10th Panzer Division at Fondouk and the 21st at Faid and Rebaou, von
Arnim, instead of returning both divisions to Rommel, hoped to keep them
for use in the north . The front in Tunisia now became quiet, and the first or
preliminary phase of what would develop into the Battle of Kasserine Pass
ended .
On the Allied side, Eisenhower questioned Fredendall's competence,
Anderson doubted the battleworthiness of American troops, Fredendall
wondered whether Ward was proficient, McQuillin castigated Stark, and so it
went down the line . American ineptitude and failure to rescue the French
defenders at Faid had shocked the French . Additional American units-parts
of Maj . Gen . Terry Allen's 1st Infantry Division and of Ryder's 34th
Division-moved into southern Tunisia but they were split into small parcels
and physically separated . During the second week of February, Fredendall's
combat units were deployed as follows : At the front, in blocking positions on
two hills covering the roads west from Faid and Rebaou to Sidi bou Zid and
Sbeitla were two forces . On the hill called Djebel Lessouda north of the Faid
road was Lt . Col. John K. Waters of the 1st Armored Division . He
commanded about 900 troops-a company of fifteen tanks, some reconnaissance
elements, a tank-destroyer platoon, and a battery of self-propelled 105-
mm howitzers-as well as the 2d Battalion (less a rifle company) of the 168th
Infantry. In support of Waters, Lt . Col . Louis Hightower, a few miles away at
the village of Sidi bou Zid, commanded fifty-one tanks, twelve tank destroyers,
and two artillery battalions of the 1st Armored Division .
On Djebel Ksaira, overlooking the road from Rebaou, was Col . Thomas
D. Drake, who had taken command of the 168th Infantry in January. He had
about 1,000 men of the 3d Battalion (plus a rifle company of the 2d) of the
168th, plus 650 miscellaneous troops-a medical detachment, the regimental
band, 200 engineers, an attached cannon company, several antiaircraft guns,
and a few artillery pieces . Supporting Drake was the Reconnaissance
Battalion of the 1st Armored Division near Sidi bou Zid . Drake received 200
replacement troops on 12 February, but some lacked weapons, quite a few had
never fired a rifle, and none had entrenching tools or bayonets . On the
following day, Drake accepted several truckloads of brand-new bazookas ; no
one on the hill had ever fired this antitank weapon, and Drake planned to
figure out how to operate them and to start a training program on 14
February. Behind and west of Waters and Drake were elements of McQuillin's
CCA at Sbeitla and Sidi bou Zid. Ward had his division reserve at
Sbeitla, a battalion of infantry under Kern, a battalion of tanks, and a
company of tank destroyers . CCB was near Fondouk, 100 miles from Sbeitla ;
Col. Robert I . Stack's Combat Command C (CCC), consisting primarily of
the 6th Armored Infantry, was twenty miles away in the same direction .
West of Sbeitla, Stark's 26th Infantry of the 1st Infantry Division and a
1st Armored Division tank battalion under Col . Ben Crosby were at Feriana
guarding the road from Gafsa and protecting the airfields at Thelepte, but
who controlled them was unclear . Arriving at Gafsa to augment French units
presumably under Fredendall's command were a U .S . Ranger battalion,
some artillery and tank-destroyer units, plus about a battalion of the 1st
Derbyshire Yeomanry, a British armored-car ,regiment dispatched by Anderson
to bolster the inexperienced Americans ., Fredendall's II Corps reserve
consisted of several artillery and tank-destroyer battalions near Tebessa,
where the corps headquarters was located, plus the 1st Battalion, 168th
Infantry.
Ultra-secret intercepts indicated an apparent enemy plan to strike
through Fondouk to destroy the French in the center of the Allied front, then
to turn north and rip into the British flank . Although other sources of
intelligence pointed to Axis offensive preparations in the south, Eisenhower's
G-2 at AFHQ a British officer, as well as Anderson, became convinced of an
imminent Axis thrust in the north . To preserve these positions, which pointed
toward Bizerte and Tunis, Anderson instructed Fredendall to be ready to
abandon Gafsa in the south . Together with Koeltz, Fredendall was to prepare
to withdraw about fifty miles to the Western Dorsale and there to plug the
passes, especially the two important defiles at Kasserine and Sbiba . Contrary
to Allied expectations, Kesselring, von Arnim, and Rommel, with Comando
Supremo; approval, decided to launch two attacks, both in the south . Von
Arnim was to head for Sidi bou Zid, Rommel for Gafsa. The concept,
however, was somewhat fuzzy . Von Arnim wished simply to throw the Allies
off balance and to retain possession of the 10th and 21st Panzer Divisions.
Rommel hoped to recover control of his two panzer divisions and to go all the
way to Tebessa and, if possible, beyond . If the attacks went well, Kesselring
promised to give Rommel control of at least one of the panzer divisions and
permission to go as far as he could .
The second phase of the Kasserine battle started very early on the
morning of 14 February, before Drake could institute his bazooka-firing
training program on Djebel Ksaira . During a raging sandstorm, more than
200 German tanks, half-tracks, and guns of both panzer divisions came
through Faid . One task force swung around the northern side of Lessouda and
encircled the hill ; another swung around the southern side of Ksaira and
surrounded the height . Waters' and Drake's forces, Fredendall's blocking
positions, were thus marooned . A series of American mishaps, due largely to
inexperience, then permitted the Germans rather easy and quick success . The
bad weather relaxed the Americans' security arrangements, and they were
unable to react quickly and firmly . Until the storm lifted, men on the hill had
difficulty identifying the German elements and held their fire . At 0730, as the
weather cleared, McQuillin initiated planned countermeasures . He limply
told Hightower to clear up the situation . As Hightower prepared to drive to
Djebel Lessouda and relieve the American defenders, enemy aircraft struck
Sidi bou Zid and temporarily disrupted McQuillin's command post and
Hightower's preparations . Throughout the rest of the day, German planes
harassed the Americans . Despite repeated requests for air support, only one
flight of four American aircraft appeared briefly over the battlefield .
Hightower went into action with forty-seven tanks . Although outnumbered,
he fought bravely against the more effective German tanks . By midafternoon,
all but seven of his tanks had been destroyed . During the
engagement, some American artillerymen panicked and abandoned their
guns. The 1st Armored Division Reconnaissance Battalion, ready to rescue
Drake's men on Djebel Ksaira, was unable to even start its counterattack
because some of the German tanks surrounding Drake had thrust forward
toward Sidi bou Zid and captured a reconnaissance company . The rest of the
American reconnaissance units then pulled out and headed for Sbeitla .
With his command post in Sidi bou Zid directly threatened, McQuillin,
covered by Hightower's engagement, decided to withdraw to Sbeitla. He
phoned and asked Ward to provide a shield by blocking the main road from
Faid to Sbeitla . Ward sent Kern and his infantry battalion to take up defensive
positions eleven miles east of the town at a road intersection 'that became
known as Kern's Crossroads . Around noon, McQuillin started to move his
artillery units and command post out of Sidi bou Zid . German dive bombers
attacked them and prompted confusion . As a consequence, for several hours
McQuillin lost communications with his subordinate units . That afternoon a
swirling mass of American troops-McQuillin's command post, mis-
cellaneous elements, Hightower's remnants, artillery pieces, tank destroyers,
engineer trucks, and foot soldiers-fled toward Sbeitla. McQuillin reestablished
his command post there and began to assemble and reorganize his
units .
Initial estimates of losses on that day were shocking : 52 officers and more
than 1,500 men missing . The final numbers of casualties on 14 February were
much smaller : 6 killed, 32 wounded, and 134 missing . But between Faid and
Kern's Crossroads on the Sbeitla plain, forty-four tanks, fifty-nine half-tracks,
twenty-six artillery pieces, and at least two dozen trucks were wrecked,
burning, or abandoned . An artillery commander, Charles P . Summerall, Jr.,
took his men out during the night to recover guns, trucks, and ambulances ; on
the following morning, he had eight instead of his normal twenty-four
pieces-the others were lost-backing the troops at Kern's Crossroads .