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Things were going pretty well for Allied forces 69 years ago. Allied leaders decided to begin the slow march toward Germany by invading North Africa, which was done by Operation Torch in November 1942.
The landings were successful, and the Allies initially pushed German and Italian forces back from the beachhead. Things were looking pretty rosy until a battle-tested German leader decided enough was enough.
He was Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, whose panzers and infantrymen had ruled the deserts of North Africa for a few years. The vaunted Afrika Korps was tough and ready for about any task.
So as the Allies pushed merrily on, Rommel decided to make a stand. In late February 1943 he attacked the thinly held American positions in Tunisia at a place called Kasserine Pass. For a while it was a disaster for the green American troops.
The recently arrived 1st Armored Division took the brunt of Rommel’s panzer attack. According to a veteran of an infantry division who took part, “The Germans wiped out the 1st Armored Division.”
Well not quite, but it was a pretty hard pill to swallow for the heady U.S. troops. Success appeared to be within Rommel’s grasp, until what has long been called “the fog of battle” set in.
Another German general, Gen. Juergen von Arnim, although subordinate to Rommel, had his own ideas about how the battle should be conducted. Planning his own attack, he refused to release to Rommel an armored division needed to support Rommel’s attack.
Further hampering Axis cooperation, the Italian high command had its own maneuver scheme which did not complement Rommel’s.
Dissention on the other side helped the Allied cause immensely, and ultimately allowed them to develop maneuvers that halted Rommel’s attack and save their own bacon.
Rommel’s intelligence warned of other Allied attacks that would be more dangerous than the threat in the Kasserine area, so he pulled out what remained of his troops and fought again another day elsewhere.
Several years ago we sponsored a student from Tunisia who had been to the Kasserine Pass battlefield many times. He told of seeing German and Allied tanks, artillery pieces, and all sorts of other battle flotsam and jetsam still there.
This history buff and battlefield aficionado would love to take the Tunisian major up on his offer to be my guide of the battlefield, but going to Tunisia is way down on my list of places to visit someday.
It’s in the category of “I’d love to, but…” I must say that a friend, then Col. Ken Bowra, a Special Forces officer, took some of his troopers on a training mission to Egypt and other North African countries several years ago and brought back several WW II battlefield finds.
But he was on Uncle Sugar’s dime, and I’d be on my own, and there’s a difference in the number of dimes in each coffer. As a history buff he loved the trip, as I’m sure I would, however a trip anywhere in the Middle East or North Africa in these troubling times is probably not the best of ideas.
It would still be fun to poke around former fighting machines that have laid dormant for almost 70 years. I wonder if the Leavenworth Times has a need for a temporary North African correspondent to cover 69-year-old battlefields?
I think I know the answer.
John Reichley is a retired Army officer and retired Department of the Army civilian employee.
Things were going pretty well for Allied forces 69 years ago. Allied leaders decided to begin the slow march toward Germany by invading North Africa, which was done by Operation Torch in November 1942.
The landings were successful, and the Allies initially pushed German and Italian forces back from the beachhead. Things were looking pretty rosy until a battle-tested German leader decided enough was enough.
He was Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, whose panzers and infantrymen had ruled the deserts of North Africa for a few years. The vaunted Afrika Korps was tough and ready for about any task.
So as the Allies pushed merrily on, Rommel decided to make a stand. In late February 1943 he attacked the thinly held American positions in Tunisia at a place called Kasserine Pass. For a while it was a disaster for the green American troops.
The recently arrived 1st Armored Division took the brunt of Rommel’s panzer attack. According to a veteran of an infantry division who took part, “The Germans wiped out the 1st Armored Division.”
Well not quite, but it was a pretty hard pill to swallow for the heady U.S. troops. Success appeared to be within Rommel’s grasp, until what has long been called “the fog of battle” set in.
Another German general, Gen. Juergen von Arnim, although subordinate to Rommel, had his own ideas about how the battle should be conducted. Planning his own attack, he refused to release to Rommel an armored division needed to support Rommel’s attack.
Further hampering Axis cooperation, the Italian high command had its own maneuver scheme which did not complement Rommel’s.
Dissention on the other side helped the Allied cause immensely, and ultimately allowed them to develop maneuvers that halted Rommel’s attack and save their own bacon.
Rommel’s intelligence warned of other Allied attacks that would be more dangerous than the threat in the Kasserine area, so he pulled out what remained of his troops and fought again another day elsewhere.
Several years ago we sponsored a student from Tunisia who had been to the Kasserine Pass battlefield many times. He told of seeing German and Allied tanks, artillery pieces, and all sorts of other battle flotsam and jetsam still there.
This history buff and battlefield aficionado would love to take the Tunisian major up on his offer to be my guide of the battlefield, but going to Tunisia is way down on my list of places to visit someday.
It’s in the category of “I’d love to, but…” I must say that a friend, then Col. Ken Bowra, a Special Forces officer, took some of his troopers on a training mission to Egypt and other North African countries several years ago and brought back several WW II battlefield finds.
But he was on Uncle Sugar’s dime, and I’d be on my own, and there’s a difference in the number of dimes in each coffer. As a history buff he loved the trip, as I’m sure I would, however a trip anywhere in the Middle East or North Africa in these troubling times is probably not the best of ideas.
It would still be fun to poke around former fighting machines that have laid dormant for almost 70 years. I wonder if the Leavenworth Times has a need for a temporary North African correspondent to cover 69-year-old battlefields?
I think I know the answer.
John Reichley is a retired Army officer and retired Department of the Army civilian employee.
