Sidi Bou Zid: The Destruction of Combat Command A

On the morning of 14 February 1943, two German panzer divisions came through the passes of the Eastern Dorsal and fell on the American troops around the village of Sidi Bou Zid in central Tunisia. By nightfall Combat Command A of the U.S. 1st Armored Division had lost 44 tanks and most of its artillery, and two battalions of Iowa National Guardsmen were cut off on the hills. The next afternoon a fresh American tank battalion counterattacked across the open plain and was almost wiped out; only four of its tanks came back. Over the following two nights most of the stranded infantry tried to walk out, and most were captured. This chapter follows the four days from the German plan to the last breakout, and sorts out what the records show about times, numbers and the men who were there.

Why it mattered

The Battle of Kasserine Pass is the name Americans remember, but the defeat that made it possible came five days earlier and about 45 miles (70 km) to the east. At Sidi Bou Zid, the U.S. Army lost an armored combat command, most of a second tank battalion and the better part of an infantry regiment in four days. It was the largest armored battle the U.S. Army had yet fought, and the losses, close to 100 tanks in two days, were by far the heaviest the Army had suffered in the war so far (Howe; Watson). The battle opened the road through Sbeïtla toward the Western Dorsal and the passes at Kasserine and Sbiba, which is where the next three chapters of this collection go.

Sidi Bou Zid also exposed, more starkly than any other action of the campaign, the faults the U.S. Army spent the rest of 1943 correcting. Units were scattered on isolated hilltops beyond mutual support. The armored division was broken into pieces, and its commander did not control them all. Orders came from a corps headquarters about 80 miles (130 km) to the rear that had not studied the ground. Air support was thin and the German dive bombers were not. American tanks went into battle against an enemy who outranged them, and they were sent forward on 15 February in a counterattack that no one who had seen the previous day should have expected to succeed. These lessons were learned by the men who paid for them, and they were written into the training of the divisions that went to Sicily, Italy and Normandy (Howe; Blumenson, “Kasserine Pass”).

It was also, for the Midwest, a home-front catastrophe. Most of the men captured on the hills were Iowa National Guardsmen of the 168th Infantry, recruited from the small towns of southwestern Iowa. In the spring of 1943 the telegrams reporting them missing in action came to those towns by the dozen. Among the prisoners were Lt. Col. John K. Waters, the son-in-law of Lt. Gen. George S. Patton Jr., whose captivity led two years later to one of the strangest American operations of the war, and Lt. Col. John H. Van Vliet Jr., who would be taken by the Germans to see the graves at Katyn.

The ground: a plain between two walls of mountains

Central Tunisia is crossed from north to south by two ranges, the Eastern and Western Dorsals, which split from the Atlas Mountains of Algeria and run toward the coast. Between them lies a high, open plain, cut by dry riverbeds (wadis, or oueds) and scattered with cactus hedges, olive groves and Arab farms. The roads that matter cross the ranges through a few passes. In February 1943 the Axis held the Eastern Dorsal, which they had taken from the French at Faïd Pass on 30 January (see Chapter 2). The Allies held the plain to the west of it and the towns of Sbeïtla, Fériana and Gafsa.

Sidi Bou Zid was a small market village with a French administrative post, less than 10 miles (16 km) west of Faïd Pass, on the road that runs from Faïd through Sidi Bou Zid to Sbeïtla and from there to Kasserine. To its north rose the long ridge of Djebel Lessouda, 644 m high. To its south stood Djebel Ksaïra (560 m) and the neighboring Djebel Garet Hadid (620 m), above the road that ran south toward Maïzila Pass. The heights are given here as they appear on the period maps used by the U.S. official history (Howe). About 13 miles (21 km) west of the village, toward Sbeïtla, rose a further hill, Djebel Hamra (673 m), which became the American rallying point. It should not be confused with Djebel el Hamra west of Kasserine, where the Germans were stopped on 22 February (Chapter 6).

The plain favored the side that could see farthest and shoot farthest. In winter its air is often clear enough to show a vehicle at several miles, though wind can raise dust and the midday sun produces a mirage that distorts distances. From the top of Djebel Lessouda an observer could watch the exits of Faïd Pass. From the pass, the Germans could watch the American positions. The hills commanded the plain, but they were too far apart to support one another, and anyone who held them could be surrounded on the flat ground between them.

Islands on the hills: the American dispositions

After the loss of Faïd Pass at the end of January, the defense of this sector belonged to Maj. Gen. Lloyd R. Fredendall’s U.S. II Corps, which held the southern end of the Allied line under the British First Army of Lt. Gen. Kenneth Anderson. The 1st Armored Division of Maj. Gen. Orlando Ward was the corps’ main striking force, but it was not concentrated. Its Combat Command B was held far to the north, east of Maktar, under First Army’s direct control, because Allied intelligence expected the next Axis blow farther north, through the Fondouk gap or toward Pichon. Col. Benjamin A. Dickson, the II Corps intelligence officer, thought the main attack might come at Gafsa (Howe). Ward was left with Combat Command A at Sidi Bou Zid and a reserve at Sbeïtla.

Fredendall’s headquarters, dug into a ravine near Tébessa in Algeria, was more than 80 miles from Sidi Bou Zid, and he rarely went forward (Porch, as cited in Wikipedia). His orders nonetheless set out the positions in detail. Infantry was to hold the high ground on Djebel Lessouda and Djebel Ksaïra, with a mobile armored reserve on the plain behind them. Historians since Howe have criticized the plan as one drawn from the map: it placed battalions on hills too far apart to support each other, beyond the range at which the reserve could reach them quickly, and left the plain between them open (Watson, Exit Rommel, 2007, as cited in Wikipedia). Ward and his subordinates had doubts but did not change it. Eisenhower himself, who met Anderson at Fredendall’s headquarters on 13 February, drove forward that night as far as Sbeïtla and Sidi Bou Zid and returned to Tébessa shortly before daylight (Howe). He saw nothing that night to tell him the attack would come in a few hours, and on the 13th he judged the line “as good as could be made pending the development of an actual attack” (Howe, quoting Eisenhower).

On the night of 13–14 February the American forces around Sidi Bou Zid were disposed as follows (Howe):

• Lessouda Force, under Lt. Col. John K. Waters, commander of the 1st Battalion, 1st Armored Regiment, on and around Djebel Lessouda north of the road: the 2nd Battalion, 168th Infantry (reinforced, less Company E); Company G and the Reconnaissance Company, 1st Armored Regiment; Battery B, 91st Field Artillery Battalion; and a heavy platoon of Company A, 701st Tank Destroyer Battalion. Engineers had helped to fortify the hill, and an observation post on top could report to both Waters and Combat Command A.
• The 168th Combat Team, under Col. Thomas D. Drake, on Djebel Ksaïra and Djebel Garet Hadid south of the village: the regiment’s headquarters and 3rd Battalion, under Lt. Col. John H. Van Vliet Jr., with a platoon of the 109th Engineers. The 91st Field Artillery Battalion (less Battery B) and the 155 mm howitzers of the 2nd Battalion, 17th Field Artillery, stood astride the road at the foot of Djebel Ksaïra, protected by the self-propelled antiaircraft guns of the 443rd Coast Artillery Battalion.
• The mobile reserve, the 3rd Battalion, 1st Armored Regiment, about 40 medium tanks under Lt. Col. Louis V. Hightower, near Sidi Bou Zid. A participant’s account gives 51 M4 Shermans (Newton). Brig. Gen. Raymond E. McQuillin commanded Combat Command A from a command post near the village.
• The division reserve at Sbeïtla, under Ward: the 1st Battalion, 13th Armored Regiment (light tanks, at about half strength), the 1st Battalion, 6th Armored Infantry, Company B of the 16th Armored Engineers and two antiaircraft guns.

Waters spent the evening of the 13th at Combat Command A’s command post with McQuillin and Col. Peter C. Hains III, commander of the 1st Armored Regiment. That night a strong northwest wind blew across the plain and smothered every sound except the noise of tank engines (Howe). The Germans were already moving into their start lines.

Frühlingswind: the German plan

The German commanders in Tunisia agreed that the Americans should be hit before the British Eighth Army, following Rommel’s retreating army westward across Libya, reached the Mareth Line. They did not agree on much else. Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, whose German-Italian Panzer Army was falling back into southern Tunisia, wanted a deep thrust through Gafsa and Tébessa into the Allied rear. Generaloberst Hans-Jürgen von Arnim, commander of the Fifth Panzer Army in northern Tunisia, wanted a more limited attack to push the Americans back from the Eastern Dorsal and secure his own flank. Field Marshal Albert Kesselring, the German commander in the south, brokered a compromise in early February: von Arnim would strike at Sidi Bou Zid, and Rommel would follow with an attack on Gafsa (Playfair, as cited in Wikipedia; Howe). On 8 February the Fifth Panzer Army designated its part Operation Frühlingswind, “Spring Wind.” Rommel’s attack on Gafsa was called Morgenluft, “Morning Air” (Howe).

Von Arnim gave command of the attack to Generalleutnant Heinz Ziegler, his deputy at army headquarters (Howe calls him von Arnim’s chief of staff). Ziegler had two panzer divisions. The 10th Panzer Division, under Generalmajor Friedrich Freiherr von Broich since its commander, Generalleutnant Wolfgang Fischer, had been killed by a mine on 1 February, moved south from Kairouan by night marches and assembled east of Faïd Pass. The 21st Panzer Division under Oberst Hans-Georg Hildebrandt, a veteran division of Rommel’s Afrika Korps that had been transferred to von Arnim’s command in January, had its unmotorized units near Faïd and its mobile units south of it, opposite Maïzila Pass (Howe).

The plan was a double envelopment. From the 10th Panzer Division, Group Gerhardt, built around the 7th Panzer Regiment and a battalion of the 69th Panzer Grenadier Regiment, was to cross Faïd Pass and swing northwest around Djebel Lessouda, cutting the road to Sbeïtla behind it. Group Reimann, with the 86th Panzer Grenadier Regiment, a company of Tiger tanks and a platoon of 88 mm guns, was to drive straight at Sidi Bou Zid. From the 21st Panzer Division, Kampfgruppe Schuette, under the headquarters of the 104th Panzer Grenadier Regiment, was to open Maïzila Pass and turn north against the village, while Kampfgruppe Stenkhoff, built on the 5th Panzer Regiment, made a wide hook of about 25 miles (40 km) across country to Bir el Hafey and then turned northeast, closing the trap from the southwest. A reinforced motorcycle battalion was in reserve (Howe).

Ziegler had more than 200 Panzer III and Panzer IV tanks, plus 11 or 12 Tigers: 110 tanks in four battalions in the 10th Panzer Division and 91 in three battalions in the 21st (Howe). Not all of them crossed the start line; a later study counts about 140 German tanks in the first attack (Watson, as cited in Wikipedia). Against them Combat Command A could put perhaps 50 medium tanks in the field, and the 1st Armored Division’s intelligence estimated the German armor at Sidi Bou Zid at about 40 tanks (Newton). The Luftwaffe was to support the attack with Ju 87 dive bombers and fighter-bombers from airfields close behind the front, while the Allied air forces, flying from fields farther back, were stretched across the whole front (see Chapter 7).

14 February: out of the dust at Faïd

The German columns began to move at about 04:00 on Sunday, 14 February, St. Valentine’s Day (Watson, as cited in Wikipedia; Newton). How much they were hidden by the weather is told differently. The British official history says the 10th Panzer Division attacked “under the cover of a sandstorm” (Playfair, as cited in Wikipedia), and an American tank officer who was there remembered angry winds and dust that hid the German movements (Newton). Howe’s American official history mentions the strong northwest wind of the night before and describes the Germans coming out of the pass onto a misty plain, but not a sandstorm. Both may be true for different places and hours. What is clear is that the first Americans to see the German tanks saw them close.

At about 06:30, tanks and panzer grenadiers of the 7th Panzer Regiment and the 86th Panzer Grenadier Regiment came out of Faïd Pass and ran into a patrol of Company G, 1st Armored Regiment, under Maj. Norman Parsons. Parsons’ tank was knocked out, and with it went the radio link to Waters on Djebel Lessouda. A planned artillery concentration on the mouth of the pass was never called for (Howe). By about 08:30 the 168th’s regimental headquarters had word that the 2nd Battalion on Lessouda was surrounded by tanks (168th Combat Team report, 34th Infantry Division Association). By 09:00 the observers on the hill could count about 39 Panzer IVs, some Tigers and motorized infantry moving south along the western side of the ridge toward the Faïd–Sbeïtla road (Howe). Group Gerhardt had gone around Lessouda and was behind it.

McQuillin sent his reserve north toward the Poste de Lessouda, a French post at the foot of the ridge: Hightower’s Companies H and I of the 3rd Battalion, 1st Armored Regiment, and most of Company A, 701st Tank Destroyer Battalion. Near the post Hightower met about 20 Panzer IVs, supported by guns his men took to be 88s and by up to four Tigers. Howe’s summary is blunt: the Americans were outranged and could not drive the Germans off. Hightower’s tanks fought until late morning and then withdrew southwest, covering the rest of the command as best they could. The 91st Field Artillery Battalion under Lt. Col. Charles P. Summerall Jr., son of the former Army chief of staff, fought the northern German prong by fire and movement and lost heavily (Howe).

Between 10:00 and 11:00, dive bombers and fighter-bombers attacked the American positions around Sidi Bou Zid. The 2nd Battalion, 17th Field Artillery, ordered back from its exposed positions near Ksaïra, was caught on the move and struck again and again from the air until it was destroyed as a fighting unit (Howe). By the time the command post of Combat Command A received authority to withdraw, early in the afternoon, the village was under fire, and by 14:05 the command post had moved about seven miles (11 km) southwest (Howe). A telephone call from Drake’s headquarters to McQuillin at about 11:00 was cut off with the message “No more over this line, we are leaving” (168th Combat Team report, as reproduced by the 34th Infantry Division Association).

To the south, the 21st Panzer Division had a harder morning. Its first elements, Kampfgruppe Schuette followed by the 5th Panzer Regiment, came out of the mined Maïzila Pass from about 06:00, and soft sand slowed the tanks. At 09:40 Company C of the American 81st Armored Reconnaissance Battalion reported 20 unidentified vehicles leaving the pass. Company A of the same battalion, south of Djebel Matleg, was cut off and captured with its vehicles. At about noon a column of about 30 vehicles on the road from Maïzila to Sidi Bou Zid came under fire from Drake’s men on Garet Hadid, and the skirmish went on all afternoon. Kampfgruppe Stenkhoff reached Bir el Hafey at about noon and at 13:45 turned northeast toward Sidi Bou Zid, about 18 miles (29 km) away (Howe).

At 15:30, with the village in his hands, Ziegler judged his first mission achieved. At 17:05 Stenkhoff’s tanks met elements of the 10th Panzer Division west of Sidi Bou Zid, and the two jaws closed (Howe). Combat Command A’s survivors fell back to Djebel Hamra, about 13 miles to the west, and the 1st Battalion, 6th Armored Infantry, came forward from Sbeïtla to hold a road junction about 11 miles (18 km) northwest of Sidi Bou Zid. The division later named it Kern’s Crossroads, after Lt. Col. William B. Kern, who commanded the battalion there (Howe). On the hills behind the German lines, the 2nd Battalion of the 168th on Lessouda and the 3rd Battalion and Drake’s headquarters on Ksaïra and Garet Hadid were now surrounded.

Combat Command A’s reported losses for the day were 6 killed, 22 wounded and 134 missing, figures that reflect only what was known that night, and 44 tanks, all but two of its tank destroyer guns, nine of the 91st Field Artillery Battalion’s 105 mm guns and all the 155 mm howitzers of the 2nd Battalion, 17th Field Artillery (Howe). An early estimate of the command’s personnel losses, including the infantry cut off on the hills, was 62 officers and 1,536 enlisted men killed, wounded or missing, of whom 573 belonged to the 1st Armored Division (Howe). The Germans reported taking 71 prisoners and destroying 40 tanks that day (Howe, citing German records).

Distinguished Service Cross · 14 February 1943

Lt. Col. Louis V. Hightower, 3rd Battalion, 1st Armored Regiment

Hightower’s tank battalion was the mobile reserve of Combat Command A, and it took the first shock of the German armor near the Poste de Lessouda. According to his Distinguished Service Cross citation, near Sidi Bou Zid on 14 February he learned that seven enemy tanks were attacking a command post and artillery vehicles that were trying to withdraw. His was the only American tank in the area. He moved it between the enemy and the unarmored vehicles and fought the German tanks alone, destroying four of them and allowing the column to get away. His tank was hit four times and set on fire; he got his crew out and led them on foot back to the American lines. The citation credits him with saving the command post and an artillery battery from being overrun (Headquarters, North African Theater of Operations, General Orders No. 17, 1943, via Home of Heroes). Howe’s account of the day agrees that Hightower’s tank knocked out several enemy vehicles at a danger point before it was destroyed and that its crew escaped.

Tanks, guns and ranges

The fighting on 14 and 15 February is often summed up as American Shermans against German Tigers. The record does not support that. Most of the German tanks at Sidi Bou Zid were Panzer IIIs and Panzer IVs, and many of the Panzer IVs carried the new long-barreled 75 mm gun, which the Americans called the “Mark IV Special.” The 88 mm guns and the 75 mm Pak 40 antitank guns that went forward with the panzer grenadiers, and the dive bombers overhead, did at least as much damage as the dozen Tigers. What the Germans had was an advantage in range and in the way they used it: they fought from halt positions, with antitank guns in support, and let the Americans come to them across open ground.

The night of 14 February: a decision to counterattack

By the evening of the 14th, the American commanders faced a choice between pulling back to the Western Dorsal or trying to restore the position. Anderson and Fredendall, who had spoken by telephone at 13:00, still believed the main German blow might come farther north; the attack at Sidi Bou Zid, they thought, might be a large diversion, and the Germans there might be beaten by a determined counterattack (Howe). Late on 14 February, First Army instructed Fredendall to “concentrate tomorrow on clearing up situation there and destroying enemy,” and then to build up a mobile force at Sbeïtla. The decision to counterattack, Howe notes, had already been made before the instruction arrived.

The force available was Combat Command C, under Col. Robert I. Stack, which came forward from the Sbeïtla area during the night; Stack reached the command post at about 02:30 on 15 February (Newton). It consisted of the 6th Armored Infantry (less its 1st and 2nd Battalions, which left one battalion, the 3rd), the 2nd Battalion, 1st Armored Regiment, under Lt. Col. James D. Alger, Company G of the 13th Armored Regiment, the 701st Tank Destroyer Battalion (less Companies A and C) and the 68th Armored Field Artillery Battalion (less Battery A), with engineers, an antiaircraft platoon and a medical company (Howe). Ward’s orders to Stack were to “destroy the enemy armored forces” threatening Sbeïtla and to help the cut-off groups on Ksaïra and Garet Hadid to withdraw (Howe). Alger’s battalion had not been in combat before (Newton).

No one on the American side knew how many German tanks were waiting. Division intelligence had put the German armor around Sidi Bou Zid at about 40 tanks (Newton); there were well over 100. And no one, it seems, considered seriously what the stranded infantry might do on their own. For the 168th on the hills, the division’s order was to stay where they were until the counterattack reached them, because a withdrawal in daylight across the open plain would have meant heavy losses from the air (Howe). Drake asked to be allowed to withdraw; Fredendall refused (Wikipedia, “Battle of Sidi Bou Zid,” citing Watson).

15 February: Alger’s counterattack

The leading elements of Combat Command C reached their assembly area northeast of Djebel Hamra at 09:45 on 15 February. German aircraft strafed the column as it arrived, and it did not finish reorganizing until just after noon. At about 12:40 the attack began. Alger’s tanks led in company columns, with the tank destroyers, the armored infantry in half-tracks and the self-propelled guns of the 68th Armored Field Artillery Battalion behind them, across roughly ten miles of open plain toward Sidi Bou Zid. There was a good deal of mirage that afternoon, and the formation was hidden at times in its own dust (Howe).

At 13:40 the first air attack, by 10 to 12 fighters and nine bombers, struck the column. The wadis across the line of advance had only a few crossing points, and the tanks bunched at them. A tank destroyer platoon that entered the hamlet of Sadaguïa was knocked out by Stukas. On the left, the advance platoon of Company D overran a German battery of four 88 mm and two 47 mm antitank guns, and the company drove into the village of Sidi Salem before fire from the north drove it back (Howe). German guns firing airbursts over the tanks forced the crews to close their hatches and fight half-blind. Capt. Province M. Winkler, commanding Company D, was blinded and later walked out of the battlefield alone before a tank picked him up (Newton).

The Germans had let the Americans come to them. At about 16:30 Company E on the left met an armored spearhead coming from the north, around Djebel Lessouda, and Company F on the right met another coming from the south. A third German column, reinforced by Tigers, headed toward Kern’s Crossroads behind the attack; Company G of the 13th Armored Regiment was sent to intercept it and missed it (Howe). Alger’s battalion was caught between the 10th and 21st Panzer Divisions, facing, by one count, more than 80 Panzer III, Panzer IV and Tiger tanks (Watson, as cited in Wikipedia). Alger’s own tank was knocked out as it turned back from Sidi Salem; his radio operator, Warrant Officer Frank D. Leger Jr., was killed, and Alger and the rest of the crew were captured (Howe; Newton).

At 16:45 Stack told Ward that it was doubtful the attack would reach Ksaïra before dark. Alger’s last message was characteristic of men who still did not know what had happened to them. Then his radio went silent (Howe).

In their words

Still pretty busy. Situation in hand. No answer to second question. Further details later.

By 17:40 the armored infantry was escaping from the closing envelopment, and Stack ordered a withdrawal to Kern’s Crossroads at about 18:00 (Howe; Newton). The tank battalion withdrew through antitank fire. “Only four emerged that evening,” Howe writes, with a few dismounted crews who escaped on foot. The battalion’s reported losses on 16 February were 15 officers and 298 enlisted men missing, and one officer wounded and evacuated (Howe). The usual figure for Combat Command C’s equipment losses, from a later study, is 46 medium tanks, 130 vehicles and nine self-propelled guns (Watson, as cited in Wikipedia). The Germans listed 39 American tanks, 17 armored personnel carriers, four antitank guns, three self-propelled mounts, eight machine guns, one 105 mm howitzer and about 100 vehicles captured or destroyed that day (Howe, citing German records). They claimed to have recovered all their own damaged tanks. American estimates of German losses on the 15th were 13 Panzer IVs, five 88 mm guns and ten other guns damaged or destroyed, and more than 50 men killed (Howe), estimates that the Germans’ quick recovery of their tanks makes hard to judge.

In two days the 1st Armored Division had lost, by one participant’s tally, 98 tanks, 57 half-tracks and 29 artillery pieces, and about 500 men of its own, among them about 100 trained tank crews (Newton). Alger, a West Point graduate of the class of 1935, spent the rest of the war as a prisoner. After his release he wrote that “there was little or no foresight in planning or execution of the operations” (as quoted by Newton). The phrase could stand as the Army’s own verdict on 15 February.

Cut off: the Iowans on the hills

The men left on Djebel Lessouda, Djebel Ksaïra and Garet Hadid belonged to one of the oldest regiments in the Army National Guard. The 168th Infantry traced its lineage to the 4th Iowa Volunteer Infantry of the Civil War, recruited in the companies of southwestern Iowa in 1861. As the 168th it had served in France in 1917–1918 in the 42nd “Rainbow” Division. In the Second World War it was part of the 34th “Red Bull” Infantry Division of National Guardsmen from Iowa, Minnesota and the Dakotas. It was inducted into federal service on 10 February 1941, trained in Louisiana, sailed for Northern Ireland, where it arrived on 13 May 1942, and landed at Algiers in Operation Torch on 8 November 1942 (Wikipedia, “168th Infantry Regiment”; Iowa PBS). Under Drake it took Sened Station on 1 February 1943 (see Chapter 2). Many of its companies were still made up of men from the same towns: Company F, for example, was the Villisca company (Iowa PBS).

On 14 and 15 February the battalions on the hills could do little but watch. They had no tanks and few heavy weapons. Their water and rations were short, and the air drops of supplies they were promised did not come (Rogers, Kriegy Research Group). From Lessouda the men of the 2nd Battalion saw the German tanks pass below them on the 14th. From Ksaïra and Garet Hadid Drake’s men saw the 2nd Battalion, 17th Field Artillery, bombed to pieces at the foot of their hill, and on the afternoon of the 15th they saw Alger’s tanks come on across the plain and burn. On the 15th, before dark, air-dropped messages ordered Waters to withdraw the Lessouda force during the night (Howe).

The breakout from Djebel Lessouda, 15–16 February

The Lessouda force moved off the hill after dark on 15 February. A substantial group broke through the German outpost line before daylight, and 231 men reached Djebel Hamra before dawn on the 16th, bringing some German prisoners with them. Others got out to the north or south. Three American officers and 58 men were captured at once, and a few more were taken later, among them Waters himself (Howe). An Iowa account puts the number of men who reached the American lines higher, at 420 of the more than 900 men cut off with the battalion’s commander, Maj. Robert Moore of Villisca; Sgt. Elvin Moritz of Company F later recalled walking out that night with Moore and about eleven others (Iowa PBS, “World War II Veteran: Elvin Moritz”). The difference between the two figures probably reflects men who came in over the following days and by other routes. The breakout from Lessouda was, by the standards of the week, a success.

Waters did not go with it. His command group had been cut off from his troops on the first day, and he had stayed on the hill reporting by radio what he could see. Accounts of his capture agree that he and a small group were found and taken by German infantry; one popular account has them hiding until evening before they were caught (Keiler, Warfare History Network). Howe lists him only among those captured after the breakout, without a date. Moore came home to Iowa in July 1943. When he stepped off the train at Villisca on 15 July, his six-year-old daughter Nancy ran into his arms, and the Omaha World-Herald photographer Earle Bunker took the picture. Published as “Homecoming” in Life, Time and Newsweek, it shared the 1944 Pulitzer Prize for photography (Wikipedia, “Homecoming (photograph),” citing the Omaha World-Herald).

The end on Ksaïra and Garet Hadid, 16–17 February

Drake’s two groups held on through the 15th and 16th. On the afternoon of the 16th, according to the account of the 168th’s ordeal compiled from the regiment’s records, a message from division told Drake in effect that nothing more could be done for him and that the decision was his (Rogers, citing the Center of Military History’s Kasserine Pass Battles readings). The same day Fredendall’s headquarters asked Ward to “carry out plan to withdraw 168th Infantry” from Lessouda and Ksaïra (Howe). By then the Germans were attacking Sbeïtla, about 30 miles to the northwest (Chapter 4), and there was no American force left that could have come to meet the infantry.

On the night of 16–17 February, thirsty and hungry, both groups destroyed their heavy weapons and equipment and set out on foot across the plain toward Djebel Hamra, about 15 miles (24 km) away (Howe). They did not get far enough. At dawn on the 17th German motorized troops caught them in the open and cut them down with machine-gun fire. Most of the survivors were driven into a cactus patch, and all but a few were captured: about 800 prisoners from one group and about 600 from the other, “including Colonel Drake” (Howe). Van Vliet’s 3rd Battalion alone lost about 800 of its 960 men (Wikipedia, “John H. Van Vliet Jr.”). A few men slipped away and walked for days to the American lines; some of them arrived just in time to be caught up in the fighting at Kasserine (CSI battle analysis, 1984, abstract).

Drake’s surrender is remembered in his regiment for the way he refused to make it. In the account of the last fight, his men, out of ammunition after about three and a half hours, were ordered to drive off a German armored car flying a white flag and then to fire on it; some could not, and began to give themselves up, and German tanks rolled into the perimeter. When a German officer called on Drake to surrender, he is said to have answered in four words and turned his back (Rogers, citing the CMH readings). He was taken to the German divisional headquarters, where the German commander praised the defense, and then, with his men, into a long journey of forced marches, cold nights in the open, robbery by guards, and transport through Sfax, Sousse and Tunis to Italy (Rogers).

In their words

“Colonel, you surrender.” — “You go to hell.”

The telegrams: Red Oak, Villisca and the Iowa towns

The War Department’s telegrams began to reach southwestern Iowa weeks later. Red Oak, a county seat of about 5,800 people in 1940, received more than 100 telegrams reporting its soldiers missing in action, and 45 men from the town were captured or killed in the Kasserine battles (Wikipedia, “Red Oak, Iowa,” citing Atkinson, An Army at Dawn, p. 397). For many families the next word came months later through the Red Cross, when the names of prisoners in Italy and Germany began to arrive. Most of the captured Iowans spent the rest of the war in German camps; the enlisted men were held in Stalags, the officers at Oflag 64 and elsewhere.

Red Oak’s experience gave rise to a claim, often repeated since, that the town suffered more casualties in proportion to its population than any other American community in the war. The final casualty statistics do not support it; a 1946 Iowa newspaper report ranked Montgomery County, of which Red Oak is the seat, third among Iowa counties in war dead per head (Wikipedia, “Red Oak, Iowa,” citing Time, 1966, and the Council Bluffs Nonpareil, 1946). What can be said is that a disproportionate share of the losses at Sidi Bou Zid fell on a handful of small towns whose sons had joined the same National Guard companies. The city’s name was later given to a Victory ship, the SS Red Oak Victory, now a museum ship at Richmond, California.

The Tigers of schwere Panzer-Abteilung 501

The Tiger I was the most talked-about German weapon in Tunisia, and Sidi Bou Zid was one of the first battles in which Americans met it in numbers. It was not the first meeting. Three Tigers of schwere Panzer-Abteilung 501, the 501st Heavy Panzer Battalion, attacked an olive grove about 5 km west of Djedeida on 1 December 1942, east of Tebourba, and were engaged by American M3 Lee medium tanks at 80 to 100 m; two Lees were knocked out (Wikipedia, “Tiger I,” citing German unit sources). In January 1943 Tigers fought against the French along the Eastern Dorsal. At Sidi Bou Zid, the Tigers came with Group Reimann of the 10th Panzer Division and were seen on the 14th near the Poste de Lessouda and on the 15th with the column that moved toward Kern’s Crossroads (Howe).

How many there were is uncertain. Howe gives 11 or 12 Mark VI Tigers in the attack. The German unit history used by later writers says that six Tigers and nine Panzer IIIs of the battalion’s 1st Company were attached to the 10th Panzer Division on 8 February (Schneider, Tigers in Combat, as cited in Wikipedia). German claims that Tigers knocked out 20 Shermans at Sidi Bou Zid cannot be checked against American records, which do not distinguish which German weapons destroyed which tanks (Wikipedia, “501st Heavy Panzer Battalion”).

The Tiger’s real impact on the Americans was out of proportion to its numbers. Soldiers soon began to call almost any German tank a Tiger, a habit that persisted to the end of the war in Europe. The Army’s ordnance specialists, by contrast, drew the conclusion that Tigers would be rare and that tank destroyers and antitank guns could deal with them. That judgment helped delay the rearming of the Sherman with a more powerful gun until 1944 (Wikipedia, “Tiger I,” citing Zaloga). Men who had faced the long-barreled Panzer IVs and the 88s at Sidi Bou Zid might have argued the point.

Counting the cost

Exact American losses at Sidi Bou Zid cannot be given, because the units that suffered most lost their records with their men, and early counts of “missing” included soldiers who walked in days later. Howe gives the losses unit by unit rather than as a total. The figures below are those that the records support, with their sources; the German claims are shown separately.

By the numbers

American tanks lost at Sidi Bou Zid, 14–15 February 1943

American figures first, then German claims (alternate color). Bars are scaled to the largest value.

Combat Command A, 14 Feb (Howe)44

Combat Command C, 15 Feb (Watson)46

1st Armored Division, two days (Newton)98

German claim, 14 Feb40

German claim, 15 Feb39

21st Panzer claim, 14–17 Feb103

By the numbers

Men lost from the cut-off forces and the counterattack

Captured or missing, by group, with the men who got out of Lessouda for comparison (gold).

Ksaïra group, captured 17 Febabout 800

Garet Hadid group (with Drake), captured 17 Febabout 600

2nd Bn, 1st Armored Regt, missing 15 Feb313

Lessouda, captured at once 16 Feb61

Lessouda, reached Djebel Hamra by dawn 16 Feb231

Seen whole, the cost was about 100 American tanks and most of the artillery of a combat command, and well over 2,000 men, most of them prisoners. The 168th’s 3rd Battalion and regimental headquarters were lost almost entirely and its 2nd Battalion was shattered; the 2nd Battalion, 17th Field Artillery, and the 2nd and 3rd Battalions of the 1st Armored Regiment were destroyed as fighting units. The 1st Armored Division had lost the equivalent of two of its tank battalions in two days. German losses were light by any reckoning.

From Lessouda to Hammelburg: Waters, Oflag 64 and Patton’s raid

Many of the officers captured at Sidi Bou Zid ended up together at Oflag 64, a German camp for American ground-force officers at Szubin, a small town near Bydgoszcz in occupied Poland that the Germans called Schubin. Drake was its first senior American officer, with Waters as his executive officer; Waters described his colonel as “a tough hombre” (Marek, “Talking Proud”). Drake was sent home on medical grounds in 1944, and other officers succeeded him. On 21 January 1945, with the Red Army approaching, the Germans marched the able-bodied prisoners west. About 1,290 men set out; they covered about 340 miles (547 km) in some seven weeks and reached Oflag XIII-B at Hammelburg in Bavaria on 9 March (Wikipedia, “Task Force Baum”).

On the evening of 26 March 1945, on Patton’s orders, a task force of 11 officers and 303 men from Combat Command B of the 4th Armored Division, with 16 tanks, 28 half-tracks and 13 other vehicles under Capt. Abraham Baum, set out on a raid about 50 miles (80 km) behind the German lines to free the prisoners at Hammelburg. It reached the camp on 27 March. Waters volunteered to go out with a German officer under a white flag to make contact with the Americans, and a German soldier who had not been told what was happening shot him; he was badly wounded and was treated by a Serbian surgeon who was also a prisoner, Col. Radovan Danić. The task force was destroyed on its way back: 32 men were killed, and most of the rest were wounded or captured; only 35 returned to the American lines. The camp was liberated by the 14th Armored Division on 6 April 1945 (Wikipedia, “Task Force Baum” and “John K. Waters”).

Whether Patton launched the raid to rescue his son-in-law has been argued ever since. Patton’s published diary suggests that he learned Waters was at Hammelburg only after the task force had gone; a letter to his wife suggests otherwise (Wikipedia, “Task Force Baum”). Patton later said the only mistake he knew of was not sending a whole combat command. The link from a hill in Tunisia to a burned-out column in Bavaria is one of the more striking American threads in this story, and it runs through the prisoners of Sidi Bou Zid.

Another thread runs to Katyn. In May 1943 the Germans took Van Vliet, the 168th’s 3rd Battalion commander, and Capt. Donald B. Stewart, another American prisoner, from Oflag IX/AZ to Smolensk, where on 13 May they were shown the mass graves of Polish officers in the Katyn forest. Van Vliet concluded that the Soviets were responsible. When he reported to Maj. Gen. Clayton Bissell, the Army’s intelligence chief, on 22 May 1945, his report disappeared, and he was ordered not to discuss it. He reconstructed it in 1950 and testified before the House Select Committee on the Katyn Forest Massacre on 4 February 1952 (Wikipedia, “John H. Van Vliet Jr.”).

Timeline

Sidi Bou Zid, 13–17 February 1943

1. 8 Feb 1943Fifth Panzer Army designates the attack at Sidi Bou Zid Operation Frühlingswind.
2. 13 Feb, nightEisenhower drives forward to Sbeïtla and Sidi Bou Zid and returns to Tébessa before daylight.
3. 14 Feb, about 04:00German columns of the 10th and 21st Panzer Divisions begin to move through Faïd and Maïzila passes.
4. 14 Feb, about 06:30Panzers come out of Faïd Pass and destroy Maj. Parsons’ patrol; contact with Waters on Djebel Lessouda is lost.
5. 14 Feb, about 08:30–09:00Lessouda reported surrounded; about 39 Panzer IVs and some Tigers move around its western side.
6. 14 Feb, late morningHightower’s tanks, outranged near the Poste de Lessouda, fall back; Stukas destroy the 2nd Bn, 17th Field Artillery.
7. 14 Feb, 13:45Kampfgruppe Stenkhoff turns northeast from Bir el Hafey toward Sidi Bou Zid.
8. 14 Feb, 17:05The German pincers meet west of Sidi Bou Zid; Combat Command A rallies at Djebel Hamra.
9. 15 Feb, about 12:40Combat Command C attacks across the plain with Alger’s tank battalion leading.
10. 15 Feb, about 16:30–17:40German armor closes from north and south; Alger is captured; only four of his tanks return.
11. 15–16 Feb, nightThe Lessouda force breaks out; 231 men reach Djebel Hamra by dawn.
12. 16 FebThe Germans attack Sbeïtla; the groups on Ksaïra and Garet Hadid are ordered to withdraw that night.
13. 17 Feb, dawnThe 168th’s columns are caught on the plain; about 1,400 men, including Col. Drake, are captured.

Why it went wrong

The American defeat at Sidi Bou Zid had several causes, and historians weigh them differently. The first was intelligence. Allied commanders expected the main Axis attack farther north, and First Army kept the 1st Armored Division’s Combat Command B in reserve near Maktar for that reason. When the blow fell at Faïd, the strongest American armored force in Tunisia was out of reach (Howe).

The second was the plan of defense. The positions on Lessouda and Ksaïra were strong in themselves but too far apart, and their garrisons depended on a mobile reserve that was too small to deal with two panzer divisions. Once the hills were bypassed, the infantry on them could neither fight effectively nor get away. The orders that put them there came from corps, and the division commander who had to carry them out had little say (Watson, as cited in Wikipedia; Howe). Fredendall’s distance from the front, and his habit of issuing detailed orders about ground he had not seen, are a recurring theme of the American accounts. He was relieved of command of II Corps on 6 March 1943 and replaced by Patton (see Chapter 8).

The third was the counterattack of 15 February. It was ordered on an underestimate of the enemy’s strength, made across open ground in daylight without effective air cover or artillery preparation, and directed at a position the Germans had had a day to organize. A single tank battalion, inexperienced and alone, was sent to restore a situation that a combat command had lost the day before. The fourth was air power: the Ju 87s that destroyed the 155 mm battalion on the 14th and harried the counterattack on the 15th had the sky largely to themselves at the critical hours (Howe; see Chapter 7). And the last was the tanks’ guns, described above. None of this was a matter of courage. The men of Combat Command A, Combat Command C and the 168th fought hard and, in the case of the infantry on the hills, held their ground for three days under orders. What failed was the system around them.

Questions readers ask

Was Sidi Bou Zid part of the Battle of Kasserine Pass?

Yes, in the broad sense. Historians use “Kasserine Pass” for the whole series of Axis attacks in central Tunisia from 14 to 22 February 1943. Sidi Bou Zid was the opening battle, fought 14 to 17 February. The fighting in the pass itself came on 19 and 20 February (Chapter 5).

Did Rommel command at Sidi Bou Zid?

No. The attack was von Arnim’s, carried out by his deputy Ziegler with the 10th and 21st Panzer Divisions. Rommel was conducting his own attack on Gafsa farther south. He took overall direction of the offensive toward Kasserine and Thala only after 18 February.

How many Americans were captured?

No exact American total exists. Howe’s figures add up to about 1,400 men of the 168th captured on 17 February, at least 61 from Lessouda, and more than 300 tank men missing on 15 February, besides the losses of Combat Command A on 14 February. The 21st Panzer Division claimed 2,546 prisoners for 14 to 17 February, a figure that includes the fighting around Sbeïtla.

Was a Medal of Honor awarded for Sidi Bou Zid?

Not that the published award lists show. The highest decorations for the battle were Distinguished Service Crosses, including those of Lt. Col. Louis V. Hightower (14 February), Lt. Col. John K. Waters (14 February, awarded 1945) and Col. Thomas D. Drake (14–16 February, an oak leaf cluster to the cross he had won in 1918).

How it connects

The positions at Sidi Bou Zid were the result of the loss of Faïd Pass on 30 January and the failed attempts to retake it, told in Chapter 2: Faïd, Sened and the Eastern Dorsal. The Germans’ next step, the attack on Sbeïtla on 16–17 February, and Rommel’s Morgenluft through Gafsa, Fériana and Thelepte, are in Chapter 4. The road from Sbeïtla led to the Kasserine Pass, where the 19th Engineers fought on 19–20 February (Chapter 5), and to Thala and Djebel el Hamra, where the offensive was stopped (Chapter 6). The Luftwaffe’s dominance over the battlefield on 14 and 15 February is part of Chapter 7: The Air War over Tunisia, and the reforms that followed, under Patton and Bradley, are in Chapter 8. The cost of the February battles and their memory, including the American cemetery at Carthage, are in Chapter 9.

What happened afterward

The 1st Armored Division fought on through the retreat to the Western Dorsal and the battles at Kasserine, Sbiba and Thala. Ward was relieved by Patton on 5 April 1943 and replaced by Maj. Gen. Ernest N. Harmon; he later commanded the Tank Destroyer Center and the 20th Armored Division and, after the war, served as the Army’s chief of military history, the office that published Howe’s history of this campaign. The division itself was reorganized after Tunisia and fought through Italy to the end of the war.

The 168th Infantry was rebuilt with replacements and with the men who had escaped. It fought with the 34th Division at Fondouk in April and in the battles around Hill 609 in the last weeks of the campaign, then in Italy from September 1943 to the end of the war. Many of its prisoners came home in 1945 from camps in Germany and Poland. The American dead of the battle were later gathered from the plain; many now lie in the North Africa American Cemetery at Carthage, near Tunis, or were returned to their families after the war.

Sidi Bou Zid, the village, grew into a regional capital, the city of Sidi Bouzid. It became known around the world for a very different reason in December 2010, when the self-immolation of a street vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi, set off the protests that began the Tunisian revolution and the Arab Spring.

Walking the ground today

The battlefield is open country around the modern city of Sidi Bouzid, about 160 miles (260 km) by road south of Tunis. The main road west toward Sbeïtla (Sbiba and Kasserine beyond) follows roughly the line of the 1943 road, and the ridge of Djebel Lessouda is plain to see to the north of it. Faïd Pass is to the east on the road toward Sfax. The hills of Ksaïra and Garet Hadid lie to the south. There is no battlefield park or museum, and most of the plain is farmland, olive groves and cactus hedges much like those the soldiers described. Visitors should travel with a local guide, respect private land, and check current government travel advice for the region before going. The American dead of the Tunisian campaign who were not repatriated are buried at the North Africa American Cemetery at Carthage, maintained by the American Battle Monuments Commission, where the Tablets of the Missing record those who were never found.

Sources

• George F. Howe, Northwest Africa: Seizing the Initiative in the West, United States Army in World War II (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Chief of Military History, 1957), especially chapter XXI, “The Enemy Strikes at U.S. II Corps”, and chapter XXII, “The Enemy Drives Back the Allied Southern Flank” (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; reprint 2004), pp. 290–294, and Bruce Allen Watson, Exit Rommel: The Tunisian Campaign, 1942–43 (Stackpole, 2007), pp. 75–77, as cited in Wikipedia, “Battle of Sidi Bou Zid”.
• Robert A. Newton, “Battle for Kasserine Pass: 1st Armored Division Were Ambushed by the Afrika Korps at Sidi Bou Zid,” World War II magazine, September 2002, HistoryNet.
• Ann C. Rogers with David Little, Kriegy Research Group, “Colonel Thomas Davisson Drake, 1900–1970” (compiling the CMH Kasserine Pass Battles readings, Frank Diggs, Americans Behind the Barbed Wire, and the Oflag 64 Item); Ed Marek, “Oflag 64 leadership,” Talking Proud.
• 34th Infantry Division Association, 109th Medical Battalion history, reproducing the 168th Combat Team report of 24 February 1943 and the Company C casualty report of 21 February 1943.
• Distinguished Service Cross citations via Home of Heroes: Louis V. Hightower, John K. Waters, Thomas D. Drake; Military Times Hall of Valor, James Dyce Alger; Traces of War, Thomas D. Drake.
• Iowa PBS, Iowa Pathways, “World War II Veteran: Elvin Moritz”.
• Jonathan F. Keiler, on Waters and the Hammelburg raid, Warfare History Network.
• Combat Studies Institute, Battle Analysis of the Battle of Sidi Bou Zid, Tunisia, North Africa: Defensive, Encircled Forces, 14 February 1943 (DTIC ADA151626, 1984; abstract).
• Wikipedia: “501st Heavy Panzer Battalion” (citing Schneider, Tigers in Combat; Jentz, Panzertruppen), “Tiger I” (citing Jentz and Doyle; Zaloga), “75 mm gun M2–M6” (citing Bird and Livingston, WWII Ballistics), “168th Infantry Regiment (United States)”, “John K. Waters”, “John H. Van Vliet Jr.”, “Task Force Baum”, “Red Oak, Iowa” (citing Atkinson, p. 397), “Homecoming (photograph)” and “Heinz Ziegler”.
• Books (background and further reading): Martin Blumenson, Kasserine Pass (Houghton Mifflin, 1967) and “Kasserine Pass, 30 January–22 February 1943,” in Charles E. Heller and William A. Stofft, eds., America’s First Battles, 1776–1965 (University Press of Kansas, 1986); Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942–1943 (Henry Holt, 2002); Orr Kelly, Meeting the Fox (Wiley, 2002); Charles Whiting, Kasserine: The Anatomy of Slaughter (1984); Carlo D’Este, Patton: A Genius for War (HarperCollins, 1995); Omar N. Bradley, A Soldier’s Story (Henry Holt, 1951); Wolfgang Schneider, Tigers in Combat, vol. I (Stackpole, 2004); Richard Baron, Abe Baum and Richard Goldhurst, Raid! The Untold Story of Patton’s Secret Mission (Putnam, 1981).

Photographs: U.S. Army Signal Corps photographs in the U.S. National Archives, digitized by the Signal Corps Archive; U.S. Army official portrait; Bundesarchiv and Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe (German propaganda company photographs, whose captions and framing reflect their purpose); a modern photograph by Niqie (Flickr, CC BY 2.0); all via Wikimedia Commons. Insignia shown on the unit and hero cards are original illustrations, not official emblems.