The Battle of Kasserine Pass

America gets bloodied

The Battle of Kasserine Pass in February 1943 was America's first major battle in the European Theater of Operations (which North Africa was administratively a part of) in World War II. After a lengthy buildup in Britain, U.S. troops joined British and French forces in Operation Torch, the Allied landings in North Africa in November 1942. The landings caught Italian and German forces, including Rommel's (The Accomplishments and Legacy of the Desert Fox) Afrika Korps, between a rock and a hard place: to their west stood the newly landed forces; to their east, General Montgomery's (Montgomery) 8th Army, which had defeated Rommel at El-Alamein (The Second Battle of El Alamein) and was now methodically pushing westward. The Axis forces retreated to Tunisia, where they would make a stand with the help of reinforcements from Europe. It was against this cornered but still dangerous enemy that U.S. troops had to test their mettle. It didn't go as well as hoped.

In January 1943, Montgomery seemed the lesser danger to the Germans, as his advance along the North African coast was slowed down by a stretched supply line, minefields and his own cautiousness. The Allied forces approaching from the west were far closer, and had even penetrated Tunisia by late January, but they had not won yet.

The western border of Tunisia is protected by the easternmost end of the Atlas Mountains. The passes through the mountains provided good defensive chokepoints, but German General Hans-Jürgen von Arnim, commander of the 5th Panzer Army, was too slow to secure these and allowed Allied forces to cross at Faïd Pass and set up a forward base in the village of the same name. If more Allies arrived through the pass, they could have pushed further east to the sea, cutting Axis-held Tunisia into a separate northern and southern half.

Arnim's forces retook Faïd at the very end of January, easily driving out the Allies. The U.S. 1st Armored Division joined the battle, seemingly forcing the German tanks to flee. This was, however, a ruse, and the pursuing American tanks drove right into a line of German anti-tank guns that took a heavy toll and turned the division around in tatters, allowing the Germans to recapture Faïd.

With Montgomery still unable to build up a strong force in Southern Tunisia, the Axis had some time to regroup and seize the initiative. Rommel wanted to head west through Kasserine Pass and into the mountains, break through Allied lines and capture the city of Tébessa. Doing so would have disrupted the Allied buildup of forces, and would have also bagged a large amount of desperately needed supplies. Arnim, who was not subordinate to Rommel, objected to the plan and favored a defense of the passes. Resolving the bickering took a week and an intervention by Field Marshal Kesselring.

In mid-February, Arnim's forces captured the U.S. communications and supply center at Sidi Bou Zid, still east of the mountains, while Rommel took Kasserine, the city near the eponymous pass. The stage was set for a counterattack against the inexperienced U.S. troops and a smaller amount of colonial French soldiers who served on the Allied side, but were poorly equipped. (Most British units were located further up north along the frontline.)

Unknown to the Germans, American troops suffered from a significant impairment: their own leadership. Major General Lloyd Fredendall was a World War I veteran with a reputation as an excellent administrator, teacher and trainer, and he enjoyed the support of George C. Marshall. (The Organizer of Victory) Unfortunately, Marshall's intuition proved incorrect on this occasion, and Fredendall proved unfit to lead II Corps. He hardly ever visited the frontline, and spent most of his time in his large, dug-in headquarters 70 miles (110 km) behind the front. He insisted on making plans by maps alone and dismissing the reports of officers who had actually seen the terrain. He had his units split up and scattered over a wide area, too far from each other to lend mutual support. He was critical of superiors and subordinates alike, and was quick to jump to conclusions. Instead of using standard military language, he had his own personal slang in which he called infantry "walking boys" and artillery "popguns," and referred to locations with codes like "the place that begins with C" instead of map grid coordinates. This made his orders so confusing that time was often lost trying to figure out what he wanted done. He deliberately left the commander of the 1st Armored Division out of meetings after the man protested the division of his forces into scattered "penny packets." Fredendall was also lax in keeping in touch with his superior, British Lieutenant-General Kenneth Anderson; this often meant that U.S. forces in the field received simultaneous and contradictory orders from Fredendall and Anderson. Instead of giving orders to his division commanders and letting them give their own orders to regimental commanders, he often issued an order directly to a regiment, leaving the division commander out of the loop and not knowing what one of his subordinate regiments was doing. He was reportedly drunk on at least one occasion during the battle.

The Axis offensive began in the early hours of February 19, but was quickly complicated by the meddling Italian High Command, which Rommel was subordinate to. He received new orders during the day: he was to split up his forces, send them through both Sbiba and Kasserine Passes (to the north and west, respectively), and make a push northward to the town of Thala and the city of Le Kef beyond in an attempt to threaten the flanks of Allied forces in the north. The Italian orders were stupidly optimistic, since there weren't nearly enough Axis forces present for such a grand offensive.

Appalled but forced to follow orders, Rommel made the necessary adjustments. Predictably, the forces sent through Sbiba Pass encountered strong British, American and smaller French units protected by minefields. The offensive ground to a halt and was forced to retreat the next day.

The push through Kasserine Pass got off to a better start. The pass favored the dug-in defenders, and the tank crews of the Afrika Korps were used to more maneuverability in the open desert, but Axis experience won out after a full day of heavy fighting. Most of the Allied forces in the region were too far to support the defense positions, but various units were sent to the area piecemeal. The two hills guarding the pass were overrun during the night, and German Panzergrenadier (mechanized infantry) and Italian Bersaglieri (light infantry) forces attacked the American lines in the middle of the pass in the morning. A push by an Italian regiment, in which the regimental commander, one Colonel Bonfatti, gave his life, managed to break through the lines, allowing Axis units to pour through the pass in great numbers. The U.S. equipment captured by the enemy included a large number of M3 half-tracks (The American half-track), which the Germans enthusiastically put to use for some time after the battle.

Rommel was still bound by the Italian High Command's ill-considered orders, and had to further subdivide his forces as they were coming up the pass. Some were sent northwest toward his original goal of Tébessa to capture supplies, while the rest headed north along a different route toward Thala.

The westward prong never got near its target, as it ran into U.S. infantry and some of the still combatworthy parts of the 1st Armored Division, which was badly mauled at Faïd during the initial Allied incursion into Tunesia. The Axis enjoyed a local air superiority with Ju 87 "Stuka" dive bombers and the newest version of the Fw 190 "Butcher bird." (Focke-Wlf Fw 190) The Allies had more planes in Africa, but most of them too far west and couldn't reach the battlefield. The Luftwaffe threw its weight behind the German and Italian ground forces, but to no avail. U.S. Generals Paul Robinett and Terry Allen ("Terrible" Terry, the Bad Boy General) organized a tenacious defense, and the German advance was thrown back on February 22.

Even as the westward push was being brought to a halt, Rommel was personally leading the third prong of the attack northward, towards Thala. Capturing Thala would have cut off the U.S. 9th Infantry Division and trapped part of the 1st Armored Division between German forces. Allied troops fought a costly delaying action, retreating ridge by ridge, but Rommel still reached a point just south of the town by nightfall on February 21. He was, however, hindered by his own colleague, General von Arnim. Still obsessed with a defensive posture in the north, von Arnim refused to send Rommel an additional tank division to help out, and the single battle group he did send did not have any of the superior Tiger heavy tanks.

Meanwhile, the Allied troops holding Thala were reinforced by the 48-gun divisional artillery of the 9th Division, which had recently arrived after a 4-day 800-mile (1,290 km) march from Morocco. The troops were almost deprived of the life-saving help: General Anderson, commander of the British 1st Army and the commander in overall charge of all Allied troops in the area, ordered the artillery to pull back to Le Kef. The guns were convinced to stay at the last minute by an American officer who wasn't even supposed to be giving order: Major General Ernest Nason Harmon.

Harmon was sent to Tunesia by Eisenhower (The Supreme Commander) to observe and report on the battle. After becoming disgusted with Fredendall's leadership style, he left for the frontline to help however he could. Both Harmon and British Brigadier Cameron Nicholson, leader of an impromptu battle group called Nickforce that was helping the Americans, convinced the artillery commander to ignore his orders and stay in Thala.

The 48 American heavy artillery pieces were joined by 36 British ones, lending Thala's defenders murderous firepower. On the morning of February 22, the combined artillery batteries flooded the battlefield with a year's (peacetime) supply of shells, not only stopping the front Panzer Division dead in its tracks, but even preventing them from retreating until nightfall. More Allied reinforcements continued to arrive throughout the day, putting Thala out of Axis reach. Overextended, running out of supplies and all three prongs of his attack stopped, Rommel had no choice but to retreat to the east, allowing the Allies to reoccupy the pass by February 24 and advance into Tunesia soon after.

Rommel's offensive has failed, but Allied casualties were disproportionate, especially for the side that had the advantage of defensive terrain. Close to 4,000 Allied soldiers were killed or wounded and another 3,000 captured; German and Italian dead and wounded amounted to 1,000, with 600 prisoners of war.

Harmon's damning report on Fredendall's incompetent leadership caused the latter's recall to the United States. Harmon was offered Fredendall's position, but he declined, feeling it would be wrong to benefit from his criticism. The post was next offered to George S. Patton (The Wars of George S. Patton), who quickly shook up the beaten and demoralized II Corps and turned it into an effective fighting force. Tellingly of how badly things had been run before, Patton wrote the following to his wife shortly after relieving Fredendall: "Fredendall is a great sport, and I feel sure, is a victim largely due to circumstances beyond his control." One week later, after he inspected his new command, Patton wrote: "I cannot see what Fredendall did to justify his existence."

The loss American forces suffered at Kasserine Pass in blood and equipment was bad enough, but was made all the worse by the loss of respect. The disastrous first battle convinced the British that American troops were second-rate, and it took much effort during the Italian Campaign to change their mind.

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