[Boats]

Part two: cont'd

Fredendall’s troops were also lacking. Not in courage, but in the knowledge that armies learn the hard way. The Thirty-Fourth Infantry Division, for example, was composed of National Guardsmen who lacked physical fitness and basic soldiering skills such as map reading. The Americans laid minefields in front of their positions, marked with flags so their own troops wouldn’t run into them; the Germans appreciated the thoughtfulness. Communications, and command and control, proved inadequate. As for the equipment, the M-4 Sherman was a decent tank in early 1943, while halftrack-mounted antitank guns were vulnerable. When Gen. Omar Bradley asked a GI if Germans machine gun bullets could penetrate the thinly armored M-3 halftrack troop carriers, the reply was, “No, sir, they only come through the wall and rattle around a bit.”

Kasserine was actually a series of lost battles. The first victims were the undergunned Free French, who were ejected from Faid Pass on January 30: a U.S. armored riposte was decimated by German antitank guns. Emboldened, Rommel urged a massive attack, which he commanded himself. Fortunately for the Allies, the Germans opted two separate attacks, one launched by von Arnim and the other by Rommel, who failed to support each other.

On February 14, von Arnim struck Sidi Bou Zid in Operation Frühlingswind (“Spring Wind”). The Thirty-Fourth Infantry Division had fortified three hills, too far apart to offer mutual support. The veteran German armor and mechanized infantry bypassed and surrounded the defenders and overran an artillery battalion. A counterattack by the First Armored ran into the panzers—including Tigers. The Americans lost more than one hundred tanks and 1,500 prisoners (one of whom was Patton’s son-in-law, Col. John Waters). Two days later, at Sbeitla, a German night attack by panzers and infantry routed the First Armored as fleeing vehicles jammed the roads (“we just lost our heads,” a soldier later admitted sheepishly, according to Blumenson).

Worse was to come. Fredendall, who had evacuated his command post to a yet “safer” location, ordered a withdrawal. U.S. troops concentrated around Kasserine Pass, only to be hit by Rommel’s German and Italian troops on February 19. Again, the Germans bypassed and surrounded American strongpoints. Some defenders fled, others fought, and all were engulfed by chaos.

Field Marshal Harold Alexander, an experienced and imperturbable British commander, was shocked when he visited the II Corps. “Confusion among the retreating units, uncertainty among commanders, and the lack of a coordinated plan of defense convinced him that drastic measures were necessary to restore stability,” Blumenson recounts. Alexander’s drastic measures were to order the retreat to halt and the defenders to fight, while British and American reinforcements arrived. As at the Battle of the Bulge, it wouldn’t be the last time that the British helped “tidy up” an American disaster.

Finally, the tide began to turn. U.S. and British artillery combined to unleash devastating barrages on the attackers. As Allied resistance stiffened, the German commanders quarreled over whether to press the offensive or quit while they were ahead. Even Rommel, convinced the Germans had missed an opportunity to score a decisive blow, realized the game was over. The Axis withdrew, and Rommel shifted his forces to make an unsuccessful attack on the Eighth Army.

Revenge for Kasserine came on May 13, 1943, with the surrender of Axis forces in Tunisia. Into the barbed-wire cages streamed 275,000 German and Italian prisoners, more than at Stalingrad. Von Arnim was among them, but not Rommel, who had flown back to Europe.

Strategically, Kasserine Pass changed nothing other than to delay the end for perhaps a few weeks. The key decision had already been made by Hitler to hold on in Africa—and sacrifice his best troops. Fredendall was canned, and Patton and Bradley made their entrance into the war. The Allies learned bitter lessons about training, command, air support, logistics and how to fight a multinational war.

However, Kasserine left a bitter residue that poisoned the Allied cause for the rest of the war. It confirmed the British in their belief that the Americans were baby soldiers, soft and spoiled amateurs who needed gentle but firm guidance from their wiser, more experienced English cousins.

To British generals like Montgomery and Alanbrooke, Kasserine was proof that the British were right to urge an indirect strategy of destroying Germany by nibbling away at the Nazi periphery in places like Italy and the Balkans, rather than the American preference for a direct assault straight into France and then Germany.

That prejudice was ironic, considering that it was the British army that had been regularly beaten by Hitler’s legions. But Kasserine gave them leverage for insisting that the European theater should be run by British generals, according to British strategy.

To American commanders, not short on hubris themselves, this was insulting. And worse, it was out of touch with reality. The North African and Italian campaigns of 1942–43 were the last time that British and Commonwealth forces would contribute the bulk of Allied military might. By 1944, with America fully mobilized and Britain running out of manpower, the Americans would be the senior partner, and the British knew it.

And the last word on the Battle of Kasserine Pass? We will leave that to the Desert Fox. It was Rommel who said of the Americans that he had never seen troops so badly prepared for combat—yet learn so quickly.