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Special Units · Thala, 1943
The 9th Infantry Division Artillery
Ordered east from near Tlemcen on 17 February 1943, the division’s guns drove the length of Algeria in about four days, went into position in the dark behind a broken British line at Thala and helped persuade Rommel on 22 February that the road north was closed.
- U.S. Army · 9th Infantry Division
- Thala, Tunisia
- 17–22 February 1943
Far from the front
The 9th Infantry Division, the “Old Reliables,” landed in Morocco and Algeria with Operation Torch in November 1942 and spent the winter far from the fighting, guarding the line of communications and the border with Spanish Morocco. In mid-February its artillery was near Tlemcen, close to the Moroccan frontier, under Brig. Gen. Stafford LeRoy Irwin. Irwin was a West Point graduate of 1915, 40th in the class that also produced Eisenhower and Bradley; he had been commissioned in the cavalry, moved to the field artillery and spent the First World War at Fort Sill and with the 80th Field Artillery (Chapter 6).
The division artillery then had four battalions, the 26th, 34th, 60th and 84th Field Artillery. Three of them would make the march east: the 34th, with twelve 155 mm howitzers, under Lt. Col. William C. Westmoreland, a South Carolinian who would command American forces in Vietnam a quarter-century later; the 60th under Lt. Col. Clinton Adams; and the 84th under Lt. Col. Justin W. Stoll. With them went the cannon companies of the 47th and 60th Infantry, each with six 75 mm howitzers. None of these guns had yet fired a shot in battle in Tunisia (Howe; 9th Infantry Division Association; Chapter 6).
Tlemcen to Thala, 17–21 February
On the morning of 17 February, with the front in central Tunisia collapsing after Sidi Bou Zid, Irwin was ordered to move to Tébessa at once. By the division association’s account his orders came down to one word: go. The column was on the road by late afternoon: 2,170 officers and men in 411 trucks and jeeps, about eleven miles long, with the 34th Field Artillery Battalion leading and the 84th joining near L’Arba. The route ran east across northern Algeria by way of Algiers and Constantine, much of it on mountain roads, in bitter weather. Veterans later recalled troops coming back from the front calling out that they were going the wrong way, a recollection handed down in the division’s own history rather than a contemporary record (9th Infantry Division Association; Chapter 6).
How far they drove is given differently. Howe writes of an uninterrupted march of “over 800 miles” in four days; the division association’s histories give 800 miles in under 100 hours in one account and 735 miles in 100 hours in another. The lower figure probably measures the march to Tébessa and the higher one the whole route to the gun positions at Thala, though the sources do not say so. Either way it was among the longest forced marches by an American artillery unit in the war (Chapter 6).
The column reached Tébessa on the morning of 21 February, expecting to support II Corps on the Tébessa road, where Robinett’s Combat Command B of the 1st Armored Division and the 16th Infantry of the 1st Infantry Division were waiting at Djebel el Hamra. Instead Irwin was sent north to Thala, where the British needed artillery most. The day before, the Axis had broken through the Kasserine Pass, overrunning the 19th Engineers and Stark Force, and the 10th Panzer Division’s battle group was now driving up the road toward Thala and Le Kef (Howe; Chapter 6).
Into position in the dark
All through 21 February the British 26th Armoured Brigade, with tanks outgunned by the German Panzer IVs, gave ground ridge by ridge south of Thala. At about 19:00 a German column led by a captured Valentine tank broke into the last British position, held by the untried 2/5th Leicestershire Regiment, and after about three hours of fighting at point-blank range the Germans held the ridge and some 700 prisoners. Howe writes plainly that American units played no significant part in the defense that day (Chapter 6).
Irwin’s guns arrived behind Thala that afternoon and at dusk, Howe and the division history differing by a few hours, while the fight on the last ridge was going on a few miles to the south. A British artillery officer, Brig. H. J. Parham, had already chosen and surveyed positions for them. Through the night the gunners dug in, laid their guns and ran telephone wire. Westmoreland’s twelve 155s went in west of the town, covered by the 47th Infantry’s cannon company; the twenty-four 105 mm howitzers of the 60th and 84th went in about 3,000 yards farther south, with the 60th Infantry’s cannon company. The German-held ridge was about 1,200 yards beyond the new British front line. Irwin set up his forward command post at a British observation post on the forward ridge. Howe’s judgment is that his arrival was “highly encouraging” to defenders short of infantry and armor (Howe; Chapter 6).
22 February: the guns
Before dawn on the 22nd the British sent what remained of their tanks against the German-held ridge. The attack failed, but the survivors reported far more German tanks than were there, and on the other side it convinced the German commander on the Thala road, Friedrich von Broich of the 10th Panzer Division, that a major Allied counterattack was coming. Rommel approved his decision to wait for it. It never came. Instead, from first light, Irwin’s battalions and the British field regiments fired on the ridge, on the vehicles and guns behind it and on the roads back toward the pass. In all, about 84 guns supported the defense, 48 of them American (Howe; Watson and Playfair as cited in Chapter 6).
In the best-documented episode of the day, Battery C of the 84th Field Artillery Battalion brought four of its 105 mm howitzers forward to fire directly at German tanks over open sights. By the division association’s account it destroyed two Panzer IVs and some lighter vehicles and lost two of its guns. The fire went on so steadily that ammunition became the main worry; by the afternoon, according to the division history, the howitzers were within about fifteen minutes of running out before resupply arrived. The same history gives 1,904 rounds fired and 45 casualties, eight of them killed, without making clear whether those totals cover 22 February alone or 21–23 February (Chapter 6).
That afternoon Rommel and Kesselring agreed to call the offensive off, and on the night of 22–23 February the 10th Panzer Division’s battle group slipped away from Thala. Did the American guns save the town? The German attack had already been stopped by the British on the evening of the 21st, and von Broich’s belief in an Allied counterattack had been created by the British tanks before dawn. What the artillery did was make that belief look correct. A commander under the fire of more than eighty guns on a front of a few miles, with his supply roads shelled and his telephone lines cut, concludes that the defenders have been heavily reinforced. They had been (Chapter 6).
Massed fire, and after
The gunners’ advantage lay less in their howitzers than in how they controlled them. In the 1930s the Gunnery Department of the Field Artillery School at Fort Sill, under Maj. Carlos Brewer and then Maj. Orlando Ward, the same Ward who commanded the 1st Armored Division in Tunisia, worked out the battalion fire direction center. Every battery was surveyed onto a common grid, targets were plotted on a firing chart, and a few specialists at battalion turned an observer’s call into firing data for every gun at once. A division artillery could put thirty-six or forty-eight tubes on one patch of ground within minutes. That is what Irwin’s gunners did at Thala, on positions surveyed for them by the British. Battery C’s losses in direct fire made the other half of the lesson: keep the guns back, massed under central control (Chapter 6; Chapter 8).
The division artillery fought again with its own division at El Guettar and in the coastal hills near Sedjenane in April, then in Sicily, Normandy and Germany. Westmoreland commanded the 34th Field Artillery Battalion again in Sicily and became the division’s chief of staff in Normandy. Irwin took the 5th Infantry Division across France and Germany and at the end of the war commanded XII Corps in Patton’s Third Army; he retired a lieutenant general in 1952 and died at Asheville, North Carolina, on 23 November 1955 (Chapter 6).
The insignia, rendered
Illustration Original insignia-style artwork made for the Lake Norman Brief. It is not the unit’s official emblem. The 9th Division’s real shoulder patch was an octofoil, red above and blue below with a white center; the drawings here are not it.
Timeline
- The 9th Infantry Division lands in Morocco and Algeria with Operation Torch.
- Irwin is ordered to move the division artillery from near Tlemcen to Tébessa at once.
- The column of 2,170 men and 411 vehicles takes the road east.
- The Axis break through the Kasserine Pass.
- The column reaches Tébessa and is redirected north to Thala.
- The guns reach Thala as the British fight for the last ridge south of the town.
- Forty-eight howitzers go into position on sites surveyed by Brig. H. J. Parham.
- American and British guns fire on the German-held ridge and the roads behind it; Battery C, 84th FA, fights over open sights.
- Rommel and Kesselring agree to withdraw.
- The 10th Panzer Division’s battle group is gone from the Thala front.
People of the unit
Read the full story
- Chapter 6: Thala and Djebel el Hamra: Where Rommel Was Stopped
- Chapter 5: The Pass: The 19th Engineers and Stark Force, 19–20 February
- Chapter 8: Patton, El Guettar and Victory in Tunisia: The Army Learns
- Special Units: the 1st Infantry Division in Tunisia
- Special Units: the 1st Armored Division in Tunisia
- The Kasserine Pass collection and atlas
By the numbers
The 9th Infantry Division Artillery by the numbers
The guns behind Thala, 22 February 1943
Tubes; the British total is the difference between Howe’s 84 and the 48 American guns
Source: George F. Howe, Northwest Africa (CMH, 1957), ch. XXIV; 9th Infantry Division Association; Playfair, vol. IV.
Battery C, 84th Field Artillery, over open sights
22 February; by the 9th Infantry Division Association’s account
Source: 9th Infantry Division Association, “The Battle at Thala.”
In pictures
More photographs
In the art of World War II
Insignia, posters and art
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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), chapter XXIV, “The Enemy Is Turned Back.”
- 9th Infantry Division Association, “The Battle at Thala” and “Tunisia,” drawing on the division’s wartime history and To Bizerte with the II Corps (CMH).
- I. S. O. Playfair and others, The Mediterranean and Middle East, vol. IV (HMSO, 1966), and Bruce Allen Watson, Exit Rommel (2007), as cited in the chapters.
- Boyd L. Dastrup, “History of the US Army Field Artillery School,” Fires (January 2011), as cited in the chapters.
- Steven J. Zaloga, Kasserine Pass 1943: Rommel’s Last Victory (Osprey, 2005); Mark T. Calhoun, “Kasserine Pass: German Offensive, American Victory,” The National WWII Museum (2023).
- Further reading: Martin Blumenson, Kasserine Pass (1967); Rick Atkinson, An Army at Dawn (2002).