Patton, El Guettar and Victory in Tunisia: The Army Learns

Kasserine was a defeat, and the U.S. Army treated it as one. Within two weeks of Rommel’s withdrawal from the pass, Eisenhower had sent home the commander of II Corps, given the corps to George S. Patton Jr. with Omar Bradley at his side, and begun a hard look at how American divisions had been trained, organized and led. Over the next ten weeks the same corps retook Gafsa, beat the 10th Panzer Division at El Guettar, took Hill 609 and Bizerte, and shared in the surrender of roughly a quarter of a million Axis soldiers on 13 May 1943. This chapter follows that recovery from the inquests of late February to the end in Tunisia, separates what Patton changed from what was already changing, and traces the lessons the Army carried to Sicily and Normandy.

Why it mattered

The battles of February 1943, told in Chapters 3 to 6, cost II Corps about 6,000 men, most of a tank regiment, and much of its reputation with its British allies. In London and in Alexander’s new 18th Army Group headquarters, the question was no longer whether the Americans had courage but whether their divisions could be trusted with anything more than a supporting role. In Washington, the question was what had gone wrong with an army that had spent two years expanding, training and writing doctrine for exactly this kind of war.

The answers mattered far beyond Tunisia. The divisions that fought in North Africa, and the officers who led them, were the core of the army that would land in Sicily in July 1943 and in Normandy in June 1944. Omar Bradley, who arrived in Tunisia as Eisenhower’s observer in February, would command First Army on D-Day and 12th Army Group in the drive across France. The 1st Infantry Division would land at Omaha Beach; its assistant commander in Tunisia, Theodore Roosevelt Jr., would land with the first wave at Utah. What the Army learned between Kasserine and the surrender of 13 May, about training, about keeping divisions together, about massing artillery and about working with the air forces, was put to use on a much larger scale a year later.

This is also the part of the story most shaped by later legend. The film Patton (1970) opens with the general arriving at a demoralized II Corps and, within weeks, leading it to victory at El Guettar. The record is more interesting and more complicated. Patton did change the corps, and his drive and discipline were real. But the corps he took over had already stopped Rommel at Thala and Djebel el Hamra; much of the reform was already under way; the victory at El Guettar was a defensive battle fought by Terry Allen’s 1st Infantry Division, its artillery and its tank destroyers; and the offensive results of Patton’s six weeks in command were mixed. The final campaign in the north, the one that took Bizerte, was Bradley’s.

The inquests

The examination began before the fighting ended. On 20 February, with the Kasserine Pass already lost, Eisenhower sent Maj. Gen. Ernest N. Harmon, commander of the 2nd Armored Division in Morocco, to the front as deputy commander of II Corps, with instructions to help hold the line and to report on what he found (Defense Media Network, Zimmerman; Wikipedia, “Lloyd Fredendall,” citing Carr). Harmon arrived in the middle of the crisis, spent the next days at the front with the 1st Armored Division and the British at Thala, and came back to Eisenhower’s headquarters with a blunt report on the corps commander, Maj. Gen. Lloyd R. Fredendall. He found the corps staff poorly coordinated and Fredendall out of touch with his own front, and he recommended that he be relieved (Wikipedia, citing D’Este). Harmon’s later published account and other sources attribute to him a much blunter language than an official report would use; the substance was that the corps had lost confidence in its commander.

Others said the same. Gen. Sir Harold Alexander, who had taken command of the newly formed 18th Army Group on 19–20 February with authority over all Allied ground forces in Tunisia, toured the American sector and told Eisenhower that he would welcome a change at II Corps (Blumenson, Masters of the Art of Command, as cited in Wikipedia). Bradley, who had arrived in North Africa on 24 February as Eisenhower’s personal representative in the field, his “eyes and ears,” reported in early March that the division commanders had lost confidence in Fredendall (Wikipedia, “Omar Bradley”; Ossad, as cited in Wikipedia). Maj. Gen. Lucian Truscott, who had watched Fredendall at close range as Eisenhower’s forward representative, was equally critical in his memoir Command Missions.

The inquest went wider than one man. At the top, Eisenhower accepted that his own headquarters had misjudged where the blow would fall; his British intelligence chief, Brigadier Eric Mockler-Ferryman, who had predicted the main attack in the north at Fondouk, was replaced in late February by Brigadier Kenneth Strong (Atkinson; Howe). The broader faults were clear enough in the after-action reports and in the letters that went back to Gen. George C. Marshall in Washington: American units had been parceled out in small detachments under several headquarters, so that the 1st Armored Division fought Sidi Bou Zid as scattered combat commands rather than as a division; positions on isolated hills such as Djebel Lessouda and Djebel Ksaira could not support each other; commanders had stayed too far back; reconnaissance, map reading and patrolling were weak; and too many officers and men had treated the war as a maneuver until the moment they were attacked (Howe; Blumenson, “Kasserine Pass,” in America’s First Battles). Eisenhower himself had allowed the dispersion, and he accepted his share of the responsibility.

There was also something to be said for the troops. Between 21 and 22 February, the American and British units on the Thala and Tébessa roads had stopped two German and Italian attack groups, with the 9th Division’s artillery firing at Thala after a forced march of some 735 miles from Tlemcen in western Algeria, and the 1st Infantry and 1st Armored Divisions holding at Djebel el Hamra (see Chapter 6). Rommel’s own papers credit the Americans with learning quickly from their mistakes. The problem, as most of the inquest saw it, lay less with the soldiers than with how they had been trained, organized and commanded.

Fredendall goes home

Eisenhower first offered the command of II Corps to Harmon. Harmon declined: having just reported adversely on Fredendall, he thought it would look as though he had done so to take the man’s job (Eisenhower, as cited in Wikipedia, “Lloyd Fredendall”; Wikipedia, “Ernest N. Harmon”). Eisenhower then sent for Patton, who was commanding I Armored Corps in Morocco and planning the invasion of Sicily. On 4 March a messenger found him on a ride outside Casablanca with orders to fly to Algiers (Defense Media Network, “Turning things around”). On 5 March Eisenhower flew to Tébessa and told Fredendall that he was being replaced. The relief was presented, in the Army’s way, as a reassignment: Eisenhower recommended Fredendall for a training command at home and did not formally reprimand him (Blumenson, as cited in Wikipedia).

Patton took over from Fredendall at the corps command post at Djebel Kouif, near the Algerian border north of Tébessa, on the morning of 6 March 1943 (Howe, ch. XXVIII). Fredendall went home to what newspapers reported as a hero’s welcome. On 25 April 1943 he took command of the Second Army, a training army headquartered at Memphis, Tennessee, and he was promoted to lieutenant general with effect from 1 June 1943; he held the Second Army until 1946, retired that year, and died in San Diego in 1963 (Wikipedia, “Lloyd Fredendall,” citing Blumenson). In a sense the Army protected him. In another sense the decision reflected the system’s view of its own failure: if Fredendall’s training methods had been wrong, much of the Army’s training had been wrong with them.

One part of Fredendall’s legacy remained in the hills. During January and February a company of the 19th Engineer Regiment had spent about three weeks tunneling an underground headquarters into a ravine nine miles southeast of Tébessa, about 70 miles behind the front, the place the corps called Speedy Valley (Andrews, American Heritage, 1991, as cited in Wikipedia). Bradley later wrote that it embarrassed every American soldier who saw it. For many in the corps, it stood for the distance between the commander and the battle.

Patton takes II Corps

Patton arrived at Djebel Kouif in a convoy of scout cars and half-tracks, by Bradley’s account with sirens going, and found the corps headquarters at breakfast at ten in the morning (Bradley, A Soldier’s Story; Defense Media Network). He was given the corps for a limited time and a limited purpose: to restore it and to get it ready for the March offensive, after which he was to return to the Sicily planning. He was promoted to lieutenant general with a date of rank of 12 March 1943. He asked for Bradley as his deputy, and Bradley became deputy commander of II Corps while keeping his right to report directly to Eisenhower (Wikipedia, “Omar Bradley,” citing Weigley). It was an arrangement that both men later described with some irony. Bradley was to be Eisenhower’s observer of Patton as well as Patton’s assistant.

Patton’s first measures were about appearance and routine, and they were deliberate. The corps mess was closed at 7:30 a.m., so that headquarters officers had to be up and at work. Every soldier in the corps area was to wear his steel helmet, with the chin strap fastened; officers were to wear neckties in the field; leggings were to be worn; and violations were punished by fines, usually given as $25, about half a month’s pay for a private, with higher amounts in some accounts for officers (Defense Media Network; Bradley, A Soldier’s Story; D’Este, Patton: A Genius for War). Military police enforced the orders in rear areas, and Patton personally inspected units. His diary entry for 13 March was characteristically sharp about his predecessor, recording that he could see nothing Fredendall had done to justify his existence and that he had never seen so little order or discipline (Patton diary, as quoted by Defense Media Network).

The reaction of the troops was what Patton intended: they were angry, and they knew that something had changed. Brig. Gen. Paul Robinett, who commanded Combat Command B of the 1st Armored Division, wrote that Patton radiated action and determination; Bradley thought the rules were a reminder that a tougher era had begun (as quoted by Defense Media Network). Not everyone agreed that neckties won battles, and the fines became a soldiers’ grievance and a staple of Patton legend. The more important changes were less visible. Patton toured the divisions constantly, demanded that commanders be forward, insisted on aggressive patrolling and night attacks, pressed for the training of junior officers, and made it plain that he expected officers to share the risks of their men.

He also inherited a corps in better material condition than it had been in February. Replacement tanks, including M4 Shermans, had come forward to the 1st Armored Division; new tank destroyer battalions with M10s, among them the 899th, were arriving; the 9th Infantry Division had come east from Morocco and Algeria; and the 1st Armored Division was being reassembled as a division under its own commander. Alexander had set up battle schools behind the lines for British and American junior leaders. Air support had been reorganized after the creation of the Northwest African Air Forces in February, with the Northwest African Tactical Air Force under Air Marshal Sir Arthur Coningham and the XII Air Support Command working with II Corps (Craven and Cate, vol. 2; see Chapter 7). Patton made use of all this, and took credit for much of it, but he did not create it.

Rommel leaves Africa: Medenine and the Mareth Line

On the day Patton took command, Rommel made his last attack in Africa. After Kasserine he had returned to the south to deal with Montgomery’s Eighth Army, which had reached the old French defenses of the Mareth Line near the Libyan border. On 6 March, at Medenine, the 10th, 15th and 21st Panzer Divisions attacked British positions that had been prepared in the knowledge, from decrypted Enigma traffic, of where and when the blow would come; Bletchley Park had sent Montgomery the axis of the attack and its 06:00 start time early that morning (Hinsley, as cited in Wikipedia, “Battle of Medenine”). The British anti-tank guns, dug in and waiting, wrecked the attack. Axis tank losses are given as at least 41 by Howe and as 44 to 56 by the British official history; British losses were trifling by comparison (Howe, p. 519; Playfair, vol. IV, p. 326, as cited in Wikipedia).

Rommel, ill and convinced that the Axis bridgehead in Tunisia could not be held, flew out of Africa on 9 March 1943 to plead with Hitler and Mussolini for a withdrawal while it could still be done (The Rommel Papers; some accounts date his final departure to 10 March). He was refused, and he was not allowed to return. Command of Army Group Africa passed to Generaloberst Hans-Jürgen von Arnim, with Gen. Gustav von Vaerst at Fifth Panzer Army in the north and the Italian Gen. Giovanni Messe commanding the Italian First Army, which held the Mareth Line. The departure was kept secret, and Allied soldiers went on speaking of fighting Rommel for weeks.

Montgomery attacked the Mareth Line on the night of 20–21 March in Operation Pugilist. The frontal assault by XXX Corps across the Wadi Zigzaou, a natural tank ditch whose banks in places stood about 70 feet high, gained a small bridgehead and lost it to a counterattack by the 15th Panzer Division on 22 March. Meanwhile the New Zealand Corps under Lt. Gen. Bernard Freyberg had made a wide desert march around the western end of the line to the Tebaga Gap. Montgomery shifted his weight to that flank, and in Operation Supercharge II on the afternoon of 26 March the New Zealanders and the 1st Armoured Division, with intense air support, broke through toward El Hamma. Messe ordered the Mareth position evacuated by 28 March and fell back to the Wadi Akarit, north of Gabès (Playfair, vol. IV; Wikipedia, “Battle of the Mareth Line”). Eighth Army took Gabès on 29 March and broke the Akarit line on 6 April.

These British battles were the context for everything II Corps did in March. Alexander’s plan was for Eighth Army to break into southern Tunisia and for II Corps to help by threatening the Axis rear and drawing off reserves. The Americans’ most important contribution to the Mareth battle came at El Guettar, where the 10th Panzer Division, which might otherwise have been used against Montgomery, was sent instead against Terry Allen’s 1st Infantry Division.

The March offensive: Gafsa, Sened and Maknassy

Alexander’s directive for II Corps was cautious. It was to draw off enemy reserves from the Mareth front, regain the forward airfields around Thelepte, and set up a forward supply base at Gafsa. It was not to advance to the sea, and its main forces were to stay behind a line running from Gafsa through the Maknassy heights to Faïd and Fondouk (Howe, ch. XXVIII). The British estimate of the Americans after Kasserine was low, and Alexander wanted no second disaster. Patton disliked the limits but obeyed them, and he planned the opening move, the retaking of Gafsa, under the code name WOP.

The 1st Infantry Division attacked Gafsa on 17 March with the 16th and 18th Infantry and a reinforced battalion of the 26th Infantry, supported by five field artillery battalions. The Italian garrison had already pulled out to the east, and the town was found empty of defenders, though thick with mines and booby traps (Howe, ch. XXVIII). On 18 March Lt. Col. William O. Darby’s 1st Ranger Battalion occupied the oasis of El Guettar, about ten miles to the southeast on the road to Gabès, and began patrolling toward the Italian positions in the hills beyond it (Howe; ABMC). On the night of 20–21 March the Rangers led the 26th Infantry over the hills to come down behind the Italian positions at Djebel el Ank; the attack took several hundred Italian prisoners, and by nightfall on the 21st the division’s regiments had taken more than 1,100 (Howe; Darby, Darby’s Rangers).

To the north, Maj. Gen. Orlando Ward’s 1st Armored Division moved on Sened Station and Maknassy, toward the passes of the Eastern Dorsal that led to the coast. Ward took Sened Station on 21 March by maneuver rather than frontal attack, and his reconnaissance found Maknassy empty at 07:15 on 22 March (Howe, ch. XXVIII). The heights east of the town were another matter. Patton ordered Ward to seize them; the key position, Hill 322 on Djebel Naemia, was held by a small German force that included men of Rommel’s former headquarters guard, reduced at one critical moment to about 80 infantrymen and later reinforced to perhaps 350 (Howe). The 60th Infantry of the 9th Division, attached to the armored division, attacked on 23 and 24 March and failed.

Patton was furious. He had already warned Ward that he expected to see officers become casualties; he now demanded that Ward lead an attack himself. Ward did, on the night of 24–25 March, and was slightly wounded; the attack failed, and by noon on 25 March Ward suspended operations because his men were close to exhaustion (Howe; Atkinson). Maknassy would remain a sore point. The heights were weakly held, an opportunity to reach the coast road and cut the Axis line of retreat from Mareth seemed to be slipping away, and Patton blamed the division commander.

El Guettar, 23 March 1943

The Axis command could not ignore an American corps moving east from Gafsa toward Gabès, behind the Mareth Line, at the very moment Montgomery was attacking the line from the front. Its answer was to send the 10th Panzer Division, the strongest mobile formation it had available in the area, down the road from Gabès to destroy the 1st Infantry Division at El Guettar (Howe, ch. XXVIII). The division was under Generalleutnant Friedrich Freiherr von Broich, who had taken command on 1 February after his predecessor, Generalleutnant Wolfgang Fischer, was killed when his car ran into a minefield. Its armored spearhead was the 7th Panzer Regiment, with more than 50 tanks, and the battle group numbered more than 6,000 men, with Italian Bersaglieri in support (HistoryNet, “Showdown at Death Valley”).

Allen’s division held the hills on both sides of the road east of El Guettar, with the 18th Infantry in the path of the attack and the division’s field artillery behind it. Its anti-tank defense rested on the 601st Tank Destroyer Battalion under Lt. Col. Herschel D. Baker, equipped with M3 gun motor carriages, 75 mm guns mounted on half-tracks, and on part of the newly arrived 899th Tank Destroyer Battalion with full-tracked M10s. A curving belt of mines, Howe writes, ran from the Chott el Guettar, a salt flat south of the road, across the road and along the Keddab wadi (Howe, ch. XXVIII).

The German infantry began moving at about 03:00 on 23 March (Howe; ABMC). The 601st’s reconnaissance men heard tanks and saw infantry silhouettes at about 04:30; a warning that an armored attack was coming down the road reached the battalion at about 05:00; and its B Company opened fire at about 05:30 (HistoryNet). Daylight showed the whole valley full of German tanks, self-propelled guns and infantry in carriers moving west in a hollow between the hills. German tank-infantry teams overran American infantry and artillery positions east of Hill 336, including parts of the 32nd and 5th Field Artillery Battalions (Howe). The tank destroyers fought from shallow positions in the open with thin-skinned half-tracks against tanks that outranged them, and paid for it.

The 1st Division did not break. Its commander, by the account Rick Atkinson gives from Allen’s staff, refused a suggestion to move his command post back as German tanks approached and said he would shoot the first man who pulled out (Atkinson, An Army at Dawn, p. 440). Allen’s artillery laid concentrations on the German columns; the tank destroyers fired, moved and fired again; nineteen jeeps went back for ammunition under fire, and all but six returned (Howe). By midmorning the German attack had stalled, and the panzers pulled back several miles. Howe’s tally is that American artillery and the tank destroyers of the 601st and 899th knocked out nearly thirty enemy tanks and that the minefield stopped eight more (Howe, ch. XXVIII). The 601st was later credited with 37 tanks destroyed (Wikipedia, “601st Tank Destroyer Battalion,” citing Yeide and Gill).

The Germans came again in the afternoon. Many accounts say the Americans learned the hour from a decoded German radio message; Howe records only that the 1st Division’s headquarters was ready for the second attack, timed for 16:45, and aware of the enemy forces to be committed (Howe). It came after a dive-bomber strike and on the signal of a siren. The 18th Infantry’s report was laconic: the enemy had attacked as scheduled, preceded by dive bombers that did little damage (Howe). This time the German infantry led, with tanks hanging back, and the massed fire of the division’s artillery and the tank destroyers broke it up in the open. A. J. Liebling of The New Yorker, watching from the American side, compared the hesitant German advance to shy boys crossing a dance floor (as quoted by HistoryNet). At 18:30 a group of 38 tanks was still reported moving, but the attack was over by dark (Howe).

The cost was real on both sides. The 601st Tank Destroyer Battalion lost 21 of its 31 M3s by the count of the American Battle Monuments Commission, which also gives 14 men lost; other accounts put its vehicle losses higher and its casualties at 72 (ABMC; HistoryNet; Warfare History Network, which gives 27 tank destroyers). The 10th Panzer Division reported only 26 serviceable tanks the next morning, about half its strength of the day before (HistoryNet). German figures for tanks permanently lost run lower than American claims, probably because many damaged tanks were recovered and repaired. The Italian high command, for its part, claimed 40 American tanks destroyed and 170 prisoners (Reading Eagle, 24 March 1943, as cited in Wikipedia). For the 1st Division, the fighting from 17 to 25 March cost 51 killed, 309 wounded and 57 missing (Howe, ch. XXIX, n. 1).

El Guettar was not a decisive battle in the sense of destroying the 10th Panzer Division, and the American attempts to push east of it in the following week went badly. But it was the first time an American division had met a German panzer division in a set battle and beaten it, and the troops knew it. Liebling, who had watched the battle, wrote afterward of what it meant that one American division had beaten one German division (as quoted by HistoryNet). For the Mareth battle, the timing mattered: the 10th Panzer was fighting at El Guettar, and not against the New Zealand Corps at the Tebaga Gap, in the critical days before Supercharge II.

Maknassy and the relief of Orlando Ward

After El Guettar, Alexander widened Patton’s mission. On 22 March he had asked II Corps to prepare a strong mobile column to break through to the coastal plain and raid the Axis supply lines southwest of Maharès (Howe, ch. XXVIII). In the last days of March, as Eighth Army broke through at the Tebaga Gap and the Axis armies fell back to the Wadi Akarit, II Corps tried twice to break out east of El Guettar and Maknassy. Both attempts stalled. In the hills around El Guettar, Hill 369 and Hill 772 on Djebel Berda were fought over for more than a week; the 9th Infantry Division, brought down to join the 1st, attacked Hill 369 from 28 March onward without taking it, and the 9th’s attacks on Hill 772 were repulsed again and again from 2 to 6 April (Howe, ch. XXIX).

On the road itself, an armored force under Col. Clarence C. Benson of the 1st Armored Division, with two tank battalions, the 81st Reconnaissance Battalion, the 899th Tank Destroyer Battalion, two field artillery battalions and engineers, attacked at noon on 30 March and was stopped by anti-tank guns and mines. On 31 March Benson attacked again, at about 12:30, without waiting for the coordinated attack planned for 16:00; by the end of these attacks Task Force Benson had lost 13 tanks and two tank destroyers (Howe, ch. XXIX). Around Maknassy, Combat Command A’s attack of 31 March on Meheri Zebbeus began late and was stopped at its start line by machine-gun fire. By 2 April the Maknassy operation had been abandoned.

Patton had lost confidence in Ward, and Alexander had suggested a change. On 5 April Patton relieved him and gave the 1st Armored Division to Ernest Harmon, who came back from Morocco to take it (Howe, ch. XXIX). Bradley, by his own account, was sent to carry the order. Ward, whose division had been dispersed by corps orders, over his objections, before Sidi Bou Zid, went home to command the Tank Destroyer Center at Camp Hood, Texas, and later led the 20th Armored Division in Europe (Howe). Many historians have since judged that he was treated badly, both by Fredendall in February and by Patton in March.

The quarrel over air support, and the link-up of 7 April

The stalemate in the hills produced the sharpest Anglo-American quarrel of the campaign. On 1 April II Corps’ daily situation report complained that the lack of Allied air cover had allowed German aircraft to operate “almost at will” over American troops (Howe, ch. XXIX). That day German bombs killed Patton’s aide, Capt. Richard N. Jenson, near the corps headquarters at Gafsa (D’Este). Coningham, commanding the tactical air forces, replied on 2 April with a signal circulated across the theater that suggested the II Corps troops were not battleworthy and were using the air forces as an excuse (Howe, ch. XXIX, n. 28; Craven and Cate, vol. 2). The signal infuriated Patton and alarmed Eisenhower, who saw the alliance itself at risk.

On 3 April Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder, Maj. Gen. Carl Spaatz and Brig. Gen. Laurence Kuter came to Patton’s headquarters to smooth things over. While they were there, German fighter-bombers attacked the town, which Patton took as proof of his point. Coningham then came in person, and on 5 April, at Patton’s insistence, he withdrew his signal and sent a retraction to all who had received it (Howe, ch. XXIX). The episode showed how far the Allies still were from a working system of air support for ground troops. It also helped produce one: the arguments of April 1943 fed directly into the American air doctrine published that summer (see “The lessons,” below, and Chapter 7).

The breakout came when the Axis forces left. After Eighth Army broke the Akarit line on 6 April, almost all Axis forces facing II Corps disengaged and withdrew east during the night of 6–7 April under cover of heavy artillery fire (Howe, ch. XXIX). Task Force Benson, reduced by then to one tank battalion, one tank destroyer company and one armored infantry company, pushed down the road toward the coast, and between 16:00 and 17:00 on 7 April it made contact with a reconnaissance detail of the British Eighth Army southwest of the Sebkret en Noual, on the road to Gabès (Howe, ch. XXIX). The two Allied fronts in Tunisia were joined.

The link-up was a moment of real satisfaction, but it also marked the limits of what II Corps had achieved in the south. The Axis armies had escaped up the coast road. Alexander had hoped that II Corps might cut that road, and some British officers felt that the Americans, kept on a short leash and then committed piecemeal, had failed to do so; American officers felt that the leash itself was the problem. Both views had some truth. Patton’s corps had drawn off the 10th Panzer Division and parts of the 21st, taken thousands of prisoners, regained the forward airfields and given its soldiers their first victories; it had not won the battle of maneuver that he and Alexander, for different reasons, had wanted.

Fondouk and the 34th Division

Further north, the 34th Infantry Division had its own trial. As Eighth Army advanced, Alexander tried to cut off the retreating Axis forces by striking east through the Fondouk gap toward Kairouan with the British IX Corps under Lt. Gen. Sir John Crocker, which included the British 6th Armoured Division and Maj. Gen. Charles W. Ryder’s 34th Division. The plan called for the 34th to attack the high ground on the south side of the gap, Djebel el Aouareb, while the British cleared the north side, Djebel Aïn el Rhorab.

The American assault on 8 April went wrong from the start. Ordered for 03:00, it began at about 05:30 because of communication difficulties; the artillery fired on a schedule that left the infantry short of their objectives when the fire lifted; a planned air bombardment was canceled, reinstated and finally abandoned at 09:30; and the 135th Infantry’s left flank was raked by fire from Djebel Aïn el Rhorab, which the British had not yet taken (Howe, ch. XXX). The 133rd and 135th Infantry made little progress across open ground. On 9 April British troops took Djebel Aïn el Rhorab, the 26th Armoured Brigade cleared a lane through the minefield in the gap, and the 6th Armoured Division forced its way through, losing 34 tanks in the gap (Howe). By then the Axis forces had escaped to the north, and British armor entered Kairouan on 11 April (Howe).

The cost to the 34th was heavy for so little ground: the 135th Infantry lost 73 killed and 184 wounded between 8 and 10 April, and the 1st Battalion of the 133rd lost 15 killed and 82 wounded out of 685 men (Howe, ch. XXX). Crocker blamed the slow clearing of the pass on the Americans and recommended that the 34th be withdrawn for retraining of its junior officers under British guidance; his criticisms appeared in the press. American officers answered that the corps plan had put the division into a frontal attack across open ground under observed fire from the flank, and that it was not solely responsible for the failure (Howe). Eisenhower and Alexander moved to stop the recriminations. Bradley, by his own account, asked that the 34th be given to II Corps for the coming offensive in the north, and promised to give it a chance to prove itself (Bradley, A Soldier’s Story).

Medal of Honor · Fondouk, 9 April 1943

Pvt. Robert D. Booker, 133rd Infantry, 34th Infantry Division

Born on 11 July 1920 in Callaway, Nebraska, Booker was with the 133rd Infantry in the attack near Fondouk on 9 April 1943. According to his citation, he carried a light machine gun and a box of ammunition across about 200 yards of open ground under machine-gun, mortar and artillery fire. Wounded, he set up the gun, silenced one enemy machine gun, and was mortally wounded while firing on a second; with his last strength, the citation says, he encouraged his squad and directed its fire. He was awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously (Medal of Honor citation, as reproduced in Wikipedia, “Robert D. Booker”; LoneSentry.com).

Bradley takes II Corps north

With the two Allied fronts joined and the Axis forces penned into northeastern Tunisia, Alexander planned the final offensive. His first idea gave the main role to British First Army in the north and to Eighth Army in the south, and left II Corps, its sector pinched out between them, with little to do. Eisenhower, Patton and Bradley objected. Eisenhower told Alexander that he wanted II Corps used to the end of the campaign, and that if any sector was to be narrowed or pinched out, it should not be the American one; the American public, and the American Army, needed to see American divisions finish the job (Howe, ch. XXXI). On 12 April Patton objected to a proposal to place II Corps again under British First Army, and on 14 April Eisenhower met Alexander, Anderson, Patton and Bradley at Haïdra, where Alexander accepted the American arrangements (Howe).

The solution was to move the whole of II Corps from the south to the northern end of the Allied line, between First Army and the sea, with Bizerte as its objective. It was a feat of staff work. More than 90,000 men and their vehicles moved some 140 miles from the Gafsa–Tébessa area to the hills northeast of Béja, across the rear of First Army, at a planned rate of 2,400 vehicles a day (Howe, ch. XXXI). The 47th Infantry began relieving elements of the British 46th Division on the night of 12–13 April, and by 19 April at 18:00 II Corps had officially taken over its new sector. Its strength at the end of April was 95,194 men (Howe, chs. XXXI and XXXIII).

Patton did not go with it. On 15 April, as the move began, command of II Corps passed quietly to Bradley, and Patton returned to Morocco to resume planning for Sicily, where he would command the new Seventh Army (Howe, ch. XXXI; Wikipedia, “Omar Bradley,” gives the 16th). For the final battle, therefore, II Corps consisted of four American divisions under an American corps commander, fighting as a corps on its own front: the 1st and 34th Infantry Divisions in the center, the 9th Infantry Division in the rough coastal hills near Sedjenane, the 1st Armored Division in reserve to exploit, and the three battalions of the French Corps Franc d’Afrique near the coast (Howe, ch. XXXI). It was exactly the arrangement the inquests after Kasserine had called for.

Hill 609 and the drive to Mateur

The Allied final offensive began on 22 April, with the British IX and V Corps attacking toward Tunis. II Corps attacked during the night of 22–23 April (Howe, ch. XXXI). Its ground was a jumble of steep, scrub-covered hills on either side of the valley of the Tine River, the valley the Americans came to call the Mousetrap, with the roads to Mateur running through it. The Germans held the hills with a strong, well-sited defense of machine guns and mortars, often on reverse slopes, and they counterattacked whatever they lost. The fighting was slow and costly, a matter of one battalion taking one hill at night and holding it against counterattack the next day.

The key to the center was Hill 609, Djebel Tahent, a flat-topped massif with a sheer rock summit that overlooked the whole sector. Bradley gave it to the 34th Division. Its attacks began on 27 April with Colonel Ward’s 135th Infantry, which fought for three days on the approaches and the lower slopes. In the predawn of 30 April the 1st Battalion of the 133rd Infantry attacked the northwestern slopes with the support of the tanks of Company I, 1st Armored Regiment, under Capt. Robert D. Gwin; four tanks were knocked out, two of them recoverable. The 2nd Battalion of the 168th Infantry joined for the last phase, and a patrol of the 3rd Battalion, 135th Infantry, worked around the western side and reached the summit, where it set up an observation post (Howe, ch. XXXIII). By the afternoon of 30 April Hill 609 was in American hands.

The Germans counterattacked during the night and on 1 May, but their efforts were uncoordinated, and the massed artillery of the 34th and 1st Divisions broke up their assembly areas before the attacks could develop. A last German attempt at dusk on 1 May failed, and that afternoon the 1st Battalion, 135th Infantry, took Hill 455 to close the ring around the hill (Howe, ch. XXXIII). The division that had been dismissed after Fondouk had taken the strongest position on II Corps’ front.

Not every attack succeeded. On the 34th’s right, the 1st Infantry Division’s 1st Battalion, 16th Infantry, under Lt. Col. Charles J. Denholm, took Hill 523 in a night attack on 29–30 April and reached its crest by 04:45. At dawn the Germans counterattacked from two sides and surrounded it. Howe records that the commander and about 150 men were eventually taken prisoner and the rest killed; American tanks reached the hill at about 16:45 and drove the Germans off, too late to save the battalion (Howe, ch. XXXIII). By 29 April, before Hill 609 fell, II Corps’ casualties in the offensive already totaled 183 killed, 1,594 wounded and 676 captured or missing (Howe, ch. XXXIII).

To the north, the 9th Division under Maj. Gen. Manton S. Eddy fought through the coastal hills around Sedjenane, using wide envelopments instead of frontal attacks on the Bald and Green Hills that had defeated the British all winter; its 39th Infantry took Hills 382, 406 and 299 on 30 April (Howe, ch. XXXIII). With the hills on both sides lost, the Germans withdrew from Mateur during the nights of 1–3 May. Combat Command B of the 1st Armored Division under Brig. Gen. Paul Robinett drove up the Tine valley; the 81st Reconnaissance Battalion reached the edge of Mateur at about 11:00 on 3 May, and the main armored force arrived early that afternoon (Howe). Mateur was the first sizable town taken by II Corps in the north, and it opened the way to Bizerte and Ferryville.

Medal of Honor · Medjez el Bab, 28 April 1943

Pvt. Nicholas Minue, Company A, 6th Armored Infantry, 1st Armored Division

Minue was born on 13 March 1905 in Sedden, in Austrian Galicia, and emigrated to the United States. On 28 April 1943, near Medjez el Bab, the lead elements of his company were pinned down by flanking machine-gun fire. Acting on his own, his citation records, he charged the enemy position with fixed bayonet, killed about ten machine gunners and riflemen, and went on clearing riflemen from their dugouts until he was mortally wounded; his action gave the company the impetus to drive the enemy from the sector. He is buried at the North Africa American Cemetery in Carthage, Plot E, Row 8, Grave 4 (Medal of Honor citation, as reproduced in Wikipedia, “Nicholas Minue”; ABMC).

Bizerte and Tunis, 7 May

The decisive blow fell in the British sector. On 6 May, in Operation Strike, the British IX Corps, now under Lt. Gen. Brian Horrocks after Crocker was wounded, attacked on a narrow front in the Medjez el Bab valley with two infantry divisions and two armored divisions, the 6th and 7th, behind a heavy artillery and air bombardment. The front broke. The 6th and 7th Armoured Divisions went through shortly after 11:00 and took Massicault that afternoon; on 7 May the 7th Armoured Division’s tanks and armored cars reached Le Bardo, and the leading elements of the 22nd Armoured Brigade, with the 11th Hussars and the Derbyshire Yeomanry, were inside Tunis by midafternoon (Howe, ch. XXXIV; Playfair).

The same afternoon II Corps reached Bizerte. Reconnaissance elements of the 894th Tank Destroyer Battalion, with the 9th Division’s spearhead, reported entering the city at 16:15 on 7 May, followed closely by Company A of the 751st Tank Battalion. The Germans had already withdrawn across the ship channel, but snipers, mines and booby traps slowed the advance through the wrecked streets (Howe, ch. XXXIV). The 47th Infantry came in early on 8 May and then withdrew, so that the formal entry could be made by the French Corps Franc d’Afrique, a gesture to the French Army that had fought beside II Corps since January. Meanwhile Harmon’s 1st Armored Division took Ferryville and drove east around the lakes to cut the road between Bizerte and Tunis (Howe).

Allied planners had expected the Axis forces to retreat onto the Cap Bon peninsula and stage a long last stand there, a Tunisian Bataan, and had considered an amphibious landing to prevent it (Howe, ch. XXXIV). It did not happen. The British 6th Armoured Division forced the defile at Hammam Lif, between the mountains and the sea, in about two days of fighting, and swung south across the base of the peninsula, while the 4th Division followed. The Axis command structure broke apart. With no fuel, little ammunition, no air cover and no prospect of evacuation, since Allied air and naval forces had closed the Sicilian Strait, units surrendered as they were reached.

Surrender, 9–13 May

In II Corps’ sector the end came on 9 May. Von Vaerst’s last situation report to von Arnim, sent at 09:30 that morning, said that his forces had no armor, artillery, ammunition or fuel left and would fight to the last (Howe, ch. XXXIV). Half an hour later his emissaries came to Harmon’s lines asking for an armistice. Bradley’s headquarters had already sent the instruction that the terms of surrender were unconditional; by noon they had been accepted, and at 12:50 Harmon reported the surrender of the 10th and 15th Panzer Divisions (Howe). Von Vaerst, Generalmajor Fritz Krause and four more German generals (Buelowius, Borowietz, Bassenge and Neuffer) were held at II Corps headquarters near Mateur on 9–10 May before being handed over to First Army. The Germans on Djebel Ichkeul held out until 10 May. In the II Corps area, Howe writes, the number of prisoners reached the surprising total of almost 40,000.

Elsewhere the collapse took four more days. Von Arnim was captured with his headquarters near Sainte-Marie-du-Zit on 12 May by troops of the 4th Indian Division, and was flown to England as a prisoner. Messe, promoted to field marshal by Mussolini on 12 May, surrendered the Italian First Army to Freyberg of the New Zealand Division on 13 May, the last formal surrender of the campaign. That day Alexander signaled Churchill that the campaign was over (Playfair; Imperial War Museum).

In their words

Sir, it is my duty to report that the Tunisian campaign is over. All enemy resistance has ceased. We are masters of the North African shores.

How many prisoners were taken is one of the campaign’s standing disagreements. The British official history counts 238,243 unwounded prisoners for the whole campaign, 101,784 of them German, 89,442 Italian and 47,017 not identified by nationality; 18th Army Group’s own count was 244,500, including 157,000 Germans; the U.S. official history uses about 275,000; and Rick Atkinson considers a quarter of a million a reasonable estimate (Playfair, vol. IV, p. 460; Howe and 18th Army Group as reported by Playfair; Atkinson, p. 537, all as cited in Wikipedia, “Tunisian campaign”). The differences come from double counting in the confusion of the last days, from whether men taken earlier in the campaign or in the hospitals are included, and from the unidentified category. Atkinson estimates Axis dead in Tunisia at about 8,500 Germans and 3,700 Italians. Whatever the exact figure, far more Axis soldiers surrendered in Tunisia than the roughly 91,000 taken at Stalingrad three months earlier, which is why the campaign was soon nicknamed “Tunisgrad.”

By the numbers

Axis prisoners in Tunisia, May 1943: the estimates

Different counts of the prisoners taken in the Tunisian campaign, and the share taken by II Corps in the north on 9–10 May

U.S. official history (Howe)275,000

Atkinson’s estimatec. 250,000

18th Army Group count244,500

British official history (Playfair)238,243

of which German (Playfair)101,784

of which Italian (Playfair)89,442

Taken in the II Corps area, 9–10 Mayc. 40,000

The American price for the whole campaign, from the first fighting in November 1942 to 13 May, was 18,221 battle casualties: 2,715 killed, 8,978 wounded and 6,528 missing, many of the missing taken prisoner at Sidi Bou Zid and Kasserine. British and Commonwealth losses were 38,360 and French 19,439, for an Allied total of 76,020 (Playfair, vol. IV, p. 460; Atkinson, p. 536, as cited in Wikipedia). On 20 May the Allies held a victory parade in Tunis, with American, British and French troops marching past the Allied commanders on the Avenue Gambetta.

Timeline

From the inquests to the surrender, February–May 1943

1. 19–20 Feb 1943Alexander takes command of the new 18th Army Group; Harmon is ordered to II Corps as deputy commander.
2. 24 Feb 1943Bradley arrives as Eisenhower’s personal representative at the front.
3. 5 Mar 1943Eisenhower tells Fredendall at Tébessa that he is being replaced.
4. 6 Mar 1943Patton takes command of II Corps at Djebel Kouif; Rommel’s attack at Medenine fails.
5. 9 Mar 1943Rommel leaves Africa; von Arnim takes over Army Group Africa.
6. 17 Mar 1943The 1st Infantry Division occupies Gafsa.
7. 18 Mar 1943The 1st Ranger Battalion occupies El Guettar.
8. 20–21 Mar 1943Eighth Army attacks the Mareth Line; Rangers and 26th Infantry take Djebel el Ank.
9. 22 Mar 1943The 1st Armored Division enters Maknassy; the heights beyond hold.
10. 23 Mar 1943, 03:00–18:30El Guettar: the 10th Panzer Division attacks twice and is thrown back.
11. 26–28 Mar 1943Supercharge II breaks the Mareth position; the Axis fall back to the Wadi Akarit.
12. 1–5 Apr 1943The Patton–Coningham quarrel over air support; Coningham retracts on 5 April.
13. 5 Apr 1943Patton relieves Ward; Harmon takes the 1st Armored Division.
14. 7 Apr 1943, 16:00–17:00II Corps and Eighth Army link up on the Gabès road.
15. 8–9 Apr 1943The 34th Division at Fondouk; Pvt. Robert Booker’s Medal of Honor action.
16. 15–16 Apr 1943Bradley takes command of II Corps; the corps moves north.
17. 22–23 Apr 1943The final offensive begins.
18. 28 Apr 1943Pvt. Nicholas Minue’s Medal of Honor action near Medjez el Bab.
19. 30 Apr–1 May 1943The 34th Division takes and holds Hill 609; the 1st Battalion, 16th Infantry, is lost on Hill 523.
20. 3 May 1943The 1st Armored Division enters Mateur.
21. 7 May 1943, 16:15American troops enter Bizerte; the British are in Tunis.
22. 9 May 1943, 12:50Harmon reports the surrender of the 10th and 15th Panzer Divisions.
23. 12 May 1943Von Arnim is captured.
24. 13 May 1943Messe surrenders; Alexander reports the campaign over.
25. 20 May 1943Allied victory parade in Tunis.

What Patton changed, and what he did not

Patton’s six weeks at II Corps have been told so often, and so vividly, that they are easy to overstate. His contribution was real. He arrived at a corps that had lost confidence in its command, and he made it impossible for anyone in it to doubt that it had a commander. He insisted on standards, visited the front constantly, demanded that officers lead from the front, and gave the corps an aggressive spirit that its soldiers remembered for the rest of their lives, often with mixed feelings. The 1st Infantry Division’s victory at El Guettar came under his command and with his encouragement.

But much of what changed in March was not his doing. The decision to keep American divisions together, the arrival of new equipment and new units, the battle schools, the reorganization of the air forces, and the hard lessons of February itself were all in hand before he arrived. The defensive victory at El Guettar was won by a division commander, Allen, who had been at war since November, with artillery and tank destroyers placed and fought by his own officers. Patton’s offensive operations, at Maknassy and in the hills east of El Guettar, mostly failed, and his handling of Ward and his public quarrel with Coningham did the alliance no good. The northern campaign that ended the war in Africa was planned and fought under Bradley, whose methodical style was quite different from Patton’s.

The fairest way to put it may be that Patton and Bradley between them showed the Army two different kinds of corps command, both of which it would need. Patton gave a shaken corps its nerve back and showed what a commander’s presence could do; Bradley showed that a corps of four divisions, fighting together on its own front with properly coordinated artillery, could take ground from the German Army methodically and at a bearable cost. Eisenhower, who watched both, would use both in France.

The lessons

The Army wrote down what it had learned, and quickly. Reports from Tunisia went to Lt. Gen. Lesley J. McNair’s Army Ground Forces in Washington and to the training centers in the United States, and in 1943 the War Department published a pamphlet, Lessons from the Tunisian Campaign, for distribution to the training army (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1943; Documentation Center of North African Jews during WWII). Howe’s official history, published in 1957, summarized the lessons in a section of his final chapter. They fell into a few broad groups.

Training and leadership. Combat itself had been necessary, Howe concluded, to make the average American soldier wary and determined enough; soldiers still needed the constant control of officers who knew their business, and the campaign had tested and winnowed the officers (Howe, ch. XXXV). Map reading, use of the compass, patrolling and night movement had been weak, and Howe records the recommendation that all infantry learn basic mountain tactics. Training in the United States was made harder and more realistic, with live fire, infiltration courses and more emphasis on small-unit leaders; commanders who had failed were relieved, and officers who had done well, such as Bradley, Harmon, Eddy, Allen and Ryder, moved on to bigger tasks.

Keeping divisions together. Sidi Bou Zid had shown what happened when a division was scattered across a front in battalion and combat-command packets under different headquarters. From March onward the American divisions in Tunisia fought, as far as possible, as divisions, and from late April II Corps fought as a corps on its own front. Eisenhower insisted from then on that American forces fight under American command at corps level and above wherever possible, a principle that shaped the organization of the Allied armies in Sicily and in Normandy.

Combined arms and artillery. Armored units, Howe records, were advised to attack in depth on narrow fronts and to take time to prepare their attacks, and the reports recommended that “three battalions of artillery should support one battalion of tanks in an attack” (Howe, ch. XXXV). Infantry was found indispensable for holding ground the tanks had overrun. The American field artillery came out of Tunisia with its reputation made. Its fire direction centers, developed at Fort Sill before the war, allowed the guns of several battalions to be massed quickly on a single target, as the 9th Division’s artillery had done at Thala and the 1st Division’s at El Guettar; the observers’ reports and the German prisoners’ accounts left little doubt that American artillery was among the most effective in the war. Howe notes that prolonged, slow concentrations were found more effective than a heavier mass of fire for a shorter time, and that time-fused high explosive gave strong results. The tank destroyer force learned that its half-track guns were too vulnerable, and the M3 was replaced by full-tracked M10s and towed guns.

Air and ground. The air arguments of Tunisia, including the Patton–Coningham quarrel, ended in a doctrine. Coningham’s view, drawn from the Western Desert, was that air power had to be centrally controlled by an airman, used first to win air superiority and then massed where it was needed, not parceled out as an umbrella over individual corps. The War Department adopted that principle in Field Manual 100-20, Command and Employment of Air Power, published on 21 July 1943, which declared land power and air power co-equal and interdependent. The ground commanders were not all satisfied, and Howe notes that the argument over control was left to later months; but by the summer of 1944, in Normandy, the tactical air commands working with the American armies had developed the close, radio-linked cooperation with ground units that had been missing in Tunisia (Craven and Cate, vol. 2; see Chapter 7).

Logistics. Tunisia also taught the Army to supply a field army at the end of long, single lines of communication: the railway from Algeria with its narrow gauge, the roads over the mountains, and the forward dumps at Tébessa that had nearly been lost in February. The move of II Corps north in April, with its daily schedules of vehicles and tonnage and its stockpiles at forward dumps, was a demonstration that the staffs had learned to plan movement on a corps scale.

From Tunisia to Sicily and Normandy

Less than two months after the surrender, on 10 July 1943, Patton’s Seventh Army landed in Sicily, with Bradley’s II Corps on its left containing the 1st and 45th Infantry Divisions and with the 9th and other Tunisian veterans following. On 11 July, at Gela, the 1st Infantry Division and the Rangers held their beachhead against the tanks of the Hermann Göring Division with naval gunfire, their own artillery and anti-tank guns, a defensive battle very much like El Guettar. Allen and Roosevelt were relieved in August, after Troina; Bradley thought their division had grown undisciplined, a judgment that Eisenhower’s papers suggest was harsher than the facts required (Wikipedia, citing Chandler). Patton’s career nearly ended in Sicily over the slapping of two hospitalized soldiers.

In Normandy the Tunisian connection was everywhere. Eisenhower was Supreme Commander; Bradley commanded the U.S. First Army; the 1st Infantry Division led the assault at Omaha Beach; Roosevelt landed at Utah with the 4th Division; the 9th Division, Eddy’s division from the Sedjenane hills, helped take Cherbourg in June, alongside the 899th Tank Destroyer Battalion, which had come ashore at Utah. Patton came to France with Third Army in August 1944, and Harmon led the 2nd Armored Division against the spearhead of the German offensive in the Ardennes that December. The habits learned in Tunisia, massing artillery, fighting divisions as divisions, keeping commanders forward and working with the tactical air forces, were not invented in Normandy. They had been paid for in the hills of Tunisia.

Questions readers ask

Was Fredendall fired?

He was relieved of command of II Corps on 5–6 March 1943, after Harmon, Bradley and Alexander had all told Eisenhower that the corps had lost confidence in him. But he was not disgraced. Eisenhower sent him home to a training command, and he commanded the Second Army in the United States from April 1943 until 1946, with promotion to lieutenant general in June 1943.

Did Patton win the battle of El Guettar?

It was fought under his command, but it was won by Terry Allen’s 1st Infantry Division, its artillery, and the 601st and 899th Tank Destroyer Battalions, which threw back two attacks by the 10th Panzer Division on 23 March 1943. Howe credits the American guns with nearly thirty German tanks knocked out and the minefield with eight more.

How many Axis soldiers surrendered in Tunisia?

The counts differ: 238,243 in the British official history, 244,500 by 18th Army Group’s count, about 275,000 in the U.S. official history, and about 250,000 in Rick Atkinson’s estimate. Roughly 40,000 of them surrendered to II Corps in the north on 9–10 May.

Was Rommel captured in Tunisia?

No. Rommel left Africa on 9 March 1943 and was not allowed to return. The senior Axis commanders captured in Tunisia were von Arnim, taken on 12 May, and Messe, who surrendered on 13 May.

How it connects

The campaign’s American story begins with the Torch landings and the failed race for Tunis in Chapter 1 and with Fredendall’s dispersed deployment along the Eastern Dorsal in Chapter 2. The disasters the inquests examined are in Chapter 3 (Sidi Bou Zid), Chapter 4 (the retreat through Sbeitla, Fériana and Thelepte) and Chapter 5 (the pass); the recovery that began before Patton arrived is in Chapter 6. The air war, including the reorganization of February 1943 and the quarrel of April, is in Chapter 7. The cost of the campaign, the North Africa American Cemetery and the way Kasserine has been remembered are in Chapter 9.

Walking the ground today

The El Guettar battlefield lies along the road from Gafsa to Gabès, about ten miles southeast of Gafsa, and is still recognizable: the oasis, the salt flat of the Chott el Guettar to the south, and the hills where the 18th Infantry and the tank destroyers fought, with the valley the Germans came down stretching east toward the coast. Hill 609, Djebel Tahent, stands west of Mateur in the hills of northern Tunisia, its flat summit visible for miles across the Tine valley. Bizerte is a working port again, and its old naval base is still in use.

The American dead of the campaign who were not brought home rest at the North Africa American Cemetery in Carthage, about ten miles from Tunis, maintained by the American Battle Monuments Commission. Its 27 acres hold 2,841 graves, among them Pvt. Nicholas Minue’s, and its Wall of the Missing bears 3,724 names, with rosettes beside those since recovered and identified (ABMC). Visitors should check current travel advice for Tunisia, particularly for the border regions around Kasserine and Djebel Chambi.

Sources

• George F. Howe, Northwest Africa: Seizing the Initiative in the West (U.S. Army in World War II, Center of Military History, 1957), especially chapters XXVII–XXXV: “Gafsa, Maknassy, and El Guettar”, “II Corps Operations Beyond El Guettar”, “Attacks at Fondouk el Aouareb”, “Preparations”, “The Advance to Mateur”, “The End in Tunisia” and “Fruits of Victory” (HyperWar edition).
• I. S. O. Playfair et al., The Mediterranean and Middle East, vol. IV, The Destruction of the Axis Forces in Africa (HMSO, 1966; Naval & Military Press, 2004), for Medenine, Mareth, casualties and prisoners.
• Martin Blumenson, Kasserine Pass (1967), “Kasserine Pass, 30 January–22 February 1943,” in Charles E. Heller and William A. Stofft, eds., America’s First Battles, 1776–1965 (1986), and Patton: The Man Behind the Legend (1985); Blumenson, ed., The Patton Papers, 1940–1945 (1974).
• Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942–1943 (Henry Holt, 2002).
• Omar N. Bradley, A Soldier’s Story (Henry Holt, 1951); Dwight D. Eisenhower, Crusade in Europe (Doubleday, 1948); Ernest N. Harmon, Combat Commander (Prentice-Hall, 1970); Lucian K. Truscott Jr., Command Missions (Dutton, 1954); William O. Darby and William H. Baumer, Darby’s Rangers: We Led the Way (Presidio, 1980); B. H. Liddell Hart, ed., The Rommel Papers (1953).
• Carlo D’Este, Patton: A Genius for War (HarperCollins, 1995); Orr Kelly, Meeting the Fox: The Allied Invasion of Africa, from Operation Torch to Kasserine Pass to Victory in Tunisia (Wiley, 2002); Harry Yeide, The Tank Killers: A History of America’s World War II Tank Destroyer Force (Casemate, 2004).
• Wesley Frank Craven and James Lea Cate, eds., The Army Air Forces in World War II, vol. 2, Europe: Torch to Pointblank (University of Chicago Press, 1949); War Department, Field Manual 100-20, Command and Employment of Air Power (21 July 1943); War Department, Lessons from the Tunisian Campaign (GPO, 1943), as catalogued by the Documentation Center of North African Jews during WWII.
• American Battle Monuments Commission: “The North Africa Campaign: Remembering the Fight for El Guettar” and North Africa American Cemetery.
• Magazine and web articles: HistoryNet, “Showdown at Death Valley” (on the 601st Tank Destroyer Battalion at El Guettar, quoting A. J. Liebling and the battalion’s veterans); Warfare History Network, “In the Desert and Beyond”; Dwight Jon Zimmerman, Defense Media Network, “Command Failure: Lloyd Fredendall and the Battle of Kasserine Pass” and “Turning Things Around: Patton Takes Over II Corps”; Imperial War Museum, The Expulsion of Axis Forces from North Africa (poster, Art.IWM PST 16770).
• Wikipedia: “Tunisian campaign” (for the Playfair and Atkinson casualty and prisoner figures it cites), “Battle of El Guettar”, “Battle of Medenine”, “Battle of the Mareth Line”, “601st Tank Destroyer Battalion”, “10th Panzer Division”, and the biographies of Lloyd Fredendall, Ernest N. Harmon, Omar Bradley, Terry de la Mesa Allen Sr., Theodore Roosevelt Jr., Nicholas Minue and Robert D. Booker; tankdestroyer.net on the 899th Tank Destroyer Battalion.

Photographs: U.S. Army Signal Corps and U.S. National Archives (including the Signal Corps Archive digitizations and DPLA), the Imperial War Museums, the Nationaal Archief of the Netherlands and the National Library of New Zealand; public domain or CC0, via Wikimedia Commons. Captions follow the original archive captions where they are reliable and say so where they are not. Insignia shown in the unit and hero cards are original illustrations, not official emblems.