The 168th Infantry, Iowa National Guard

An Iowa regiment

The 168th Infantry was one of the oldest regiments in the Army National Guard. It traced its lineage to the 4th Iowa Volunteer Infantry, raised in the counties of southwestern Iowa in 1861, and as the 168th it had fought in France in 1917 and 1918 with the 42nd “Rainbow” Division. In the Second World War it belonged to the 34th “Red Bull” Infantry Division, National Guardsmen from Iowa, Minnesota and the Dakotas. It was inducted into federal service on 10 February 1941, trained in Louisiana, arrived in Northern Ireland on 13 May 1942 and landed at Algiers in Operation Torch on 8 November 1942 (Chapter 3).

Its companies were still made up of men from the same towns. Company F was the Villisca company; others came from Red Oak and the neighboring county seats, and many of their men had joined the Guard together before the war. That made the regiment close-knit. It also meant that whatever happened to a company happened to a town. In January 1943 a regular officer, Col. Thomas D. Drake, took command. A sergeant in 1918 who had won the Distinguished Service Cross in France, he led the regiment at Sened Station in the first days of February and won the Silver Star there (Chapter 3; Chapter 2).

Islands on the plain

After the Germans took Faïd Pass on 30–31 January, the 168th (less its 1st Battalion, held at Fériana as corps reserve) went to Sidi Bou Zid under Combat Command A of the 1st Armored Division. On 11 February a II Corps directive fixed the defense in detail: “DJ. KSAIRA on the South and DJ LESSOUDA on the North are the key terrain features in the defense of FAÏD,” it began. A battalion was to hold each hill, with a mobile tank reserve near the village to counterattack (Howe; Chapter 2).

The directive was sensible in its intentions and fatal in its geometry. Djebel Lessouda (644 m) and Djebel Ksaïra (560 m) were steep, isolated hills several miles apart, too far from each other for their garrisons to give support with anything but long-range artillery. The 2nd Battalion, reinforced, held Lessouda north of the road as part of a mixed force under Lt. Col. John K. Waters. Drake’s headquarters and Lt. Col. John H. Van Vliet Jr.’s 3rd Battalion held Ksaïra and Djebel Garet Hadid (620 m) to the south. Infantry on those hills could watch the pass but could not stop armor moving around them across the plain, and could not easily be withdrawn once the enemy was behind them (Howe; Chapter 3).

14–16 February: watching from the hills

At about 04:00 on 14 February the 10th and 21st Panzer Divisions began to move through Faïd and Maïzila passes. By about 08:30 the 168th’s headquarters had word that the 2nd Battalion on Lessouda was surrounded by tanks, and by 09:00 observers on the hill counted about 39 Panzer IVs, some Tigers and motorized infantry swinging around its western side. From Ksaïra and Garet Hadid, Drake’s men watched the 2nd Battalion, 17th Field Artillery, bombed to pieces at the foot of their hill. A telephone call from Drake’s headquarters to Combat Command A at about 11:00 was cut off with the message “No more over this line, we are leaving.” At 17:05 the German pincers met west of Sidi Bou Zid, and both groups on the hills were behind the German lines (Howe; 168th Combat Team report; Chapter 3).

The men on the hills had no tanks and few heavy weapons; water and rations were short, and the air drops they were promised did not come. The division ordered them to stay where they were until a counterattack reached them, since a daylight withdrawal across the open plain would have meant heavy losses from the air. Drake asked to be allowed to withdraw; Fredendall refused. On the afternoon of 15 February the Iowans watched the counterattack come on across the plain from the west and burn: of Lt. Col. James D. Alger’s tank battalion, only four tanks came back (Howe; Rogers; Chapter 3).

On the 15th, before dark, air-dropped messages ordered Waters to bring the Lessouda force off the hill that night. A substantial group broke through the German outposts, and 231 men reached Djebel Hamra before dawn on the 16th, bringing some German prisoners with them; three officers and 58 men were captured at once. An Iowa account puts the number who reached the American lines higher, at 420 of the more than 900 men cut off with the battalion commander, Maj. Robert Moore of Villisca; the difference probably reflects men who came in later by other routes. Waters himself was taken; the sources used in this collection differ on the day (Howe; Iowa PBS; Chapter 3).

17 February: the cactus patch

Drake’s two groups held on through the 15th and 16th. On the afternoon of the 16th a message from division told him, in effect, that nothing more could be done for him and that the decision was his; the same day II Corps asked the division to carry out the plan to withdraw the 168th. By then the Germans were attacking Sbeitla, about 30 miles to the northwest, and no American force was left that could come to meet the infantry (Howe; Rogers).

On the night of 16–17 February, thirsty and hungry, both groups destroyed their heavy weapons and set out on foot across the plain toward Djebel Hamra, about 15 miles away. At dawn 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 from one group and about 600 from the other, “including Colonel Drake,” in Howe’s words. Van Vliet’s 3rd Battalion alone lost about 800 of its 960 men. A few men slipped away and walked for days to the American lines; some arrived in time to be caught up in the fighting at Kasserine (Howe; Chapter 3).

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

Telegrams to Iowa, and after

The War Department’s telegrams reached southwestern Iowa weeks later. Red Oak, a county seat of about 5,800 people, received more than 100 reporting its soldiers missing, and 45 men from the town were captured or killed in the Kasserine battles. A claim often repeated since, that Red Oak suffered more casualties in proportion to its population than any other American community in the war, is not supported by the final statistics; what can be said is that a disproportionate share of the losses at Sidi Bou Zid fell on a handful of small towns. When Major Moore stepped off the train at Villisca on 15 July 1943, his six-year-old daughter Nancy ran into his arms, and Earle Bunker’s photograph of the moment, “Homecoming,” shared the 1944 Pulitzer Prize for photography (Chapter 3).

Most of the captured Iowans spent the rest of the war in German camps, the enlisted men in Stalags and the officers at Oflag 64 at Szubin in occupied Poland and elsewhere. Drake became the first senior American officer at Oflag 64, with Waters as his executive officer, and ran the camp on Army lines until he was repatriated on medical grounds in 1944. Van Vliet was taken by the Germans in May 1943 to see the mass graves of Polish officers at Katyn; his report on what he saw disappeared in 1945, and he testified before a House committee in 1952 (Chapter 3).

The regiment was rebuilt with replacements and the men who had escaped. It fought with the 34th Division at Fondouk in April and in the battles around Hill 609 at the end of the campaign, where its 2nd Battalion joined the last phase of the attack that took the hill on 30 April 1943. In Italy two of its battalions won Presidential Unit Citations, at Mount Pantano and at Cervaro (Howe; Chapter 8; Chapter 3).

The insignia, rendered

Illustration Original insignia-style artwork made for the Lake Norman Brief. It is not the unit’s official emblem. The 34th Division’s real shoulder patch was a red steer’s skull on a black Mexican water jar, the source of the name “Red Bull”; the drawings here are not it.

Timeline

1. 10 February 1941The 168th Infantry is inducted into federal service with the 34th Division.
2. 8 November 1942It lands at Algiers in Operation Torch.
3. 1 February 1943Under Col. Thomas D. Drake it fights at Sened Station.
4. 11 February 1943II Corps fixes the defense on Djebel Lessouda and Djebel Ksaïra.
5. 14 February, 08:30The 2nd Battalion on Lessouda is reported surrounded; by 17:05 both groups are cut off.
6. 15 February, afternoonThe Iowans watch Combat Command C’s counterattack destroyed on the plain.
7. 15–16 February, nightThe Lessouda force breaks out; 231 men reach Djebel Hamra by dawn.
8. 17 February, dawnThe Ksaïra and Garet Hadid groups are caught on the plain; about 1,400 men, Drake among them, are captured.
9. 30 April 1943The rebuilt 2nd Battalion joins the attack that takes Hill 609.
10. 15 July 1943Maj. Robert Moore comes home to Villisca; the “Homecoming” photograph is taken.

People of the unit

Read the full story

• Chapter 3: Sidi Bou Zid: The Destruction of Combat Command A
• Chapter 2: Faïd, Sened and the Eastern Dorsal: A Thin Line in the Mountains
• Chapter 8: Patton, El Guettar and Victory in Tunisia: The Army Learns
• Chapter 9: The Cost and the Memory of Kasserine
• Special Units: the 1st Armored Division in Tunisia
• Special Units: the 19th Engineer Combat Regiment
• The Kasserine Pass collection and atlas

By the numbers

The 168th Infantry at Sidi Bou Zid by the numbers

~1,400men captured on the plain at dawn on 17 February 1943: about 800 from one group and 600 from the other (Howe)

~800 of 960men of Van Vliet’s 3rd Battalion lost in that one morning

~15 miof open plain between the hills and Djebel Hamra, crossed on foot at night

4tanks of Alger’s battalion that came back from the counterattack of 15 February

100+telegrams reporting soldiers missing that reached Red Oak, a town of about 5,800

2Presidential Unit Citations won by its battalions in Italy, at Mount Pantano and Cervaro

The Lessouda breakout, 15–16 February 1943

Men of the force cut off on Djebel Lessouda; the two counts of those who got out differ, probably because some came in later by other routes

Cut off with Maj. Moore’s 2nd Battalion

900+

Reached the American lines (Iowa account)

420

Reached Djebel Hamra by dawn on the 16th (Howe)

231

Captured at once in the breakout

3 officers, 58 men

Source: George F. Howe, Northwest Africa (1957); Iowa PBS, Iowa Pathways; this collection’s Chapter 3

The 3rd Battalion on 17 February 1943

Van Vliet’s battalion on Djebel Ksaïra, before and after the attempt to walk out

Strength on the hill

960

Killed, wounded or captured on the plain

~800

Got away

~160

Source: Howe; this collection’s Chapter 3; the remainder is derived from the two figures above

In pictures

More photographs

In the art of World War II

Insignia, posters and art

Rudolph von Ripper, Soldier-Artist1st Armored Division: Old IronsidesRush Tanks Immediately: A Message from North AfricaView of the Mussolini Canal

Explore the Art of World War II →

Sources

• George F. Howe, Northwest Africa: Seizing the Initiative in the West, United States Army in World War II (Washington: Office of the Chief of Military History, 1957), chapters XX–XXII and XXX–XXXIII.
• 34th Infantry Division Association, 109th Medical Battalion history, reproducing the 168th Combat Team report of 24 February 1943.
• Ann C. Rogers with David Little, Kriegy Research Group, “Colonel Thomas Davisson Drake, 1900–1970,” compiling the CMH Kasserine Pass Battles staff-ride readings; Ed Marek, “Oflag 64 leadership,” Talking Proud.
• Iowa PBS, Iowa Pathways, “World War II Veteran: Elvin Moritz”; Combat Studies Institute, Battle Analysis of the Battle of Sidi Bou Zid (1984).
• Bruce Allen Watson, Exit Rommel (2007), as cited in the chapters; Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn (2002), on Red Oak.
• Further reading: Martin Blumenson, Kasserine Pass (1967); Orr Kelly, Meeting the Fox (2002).