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Sunday, March 9, 2025
Saturday, March 8, 2025
End Game
Rommel's victory in North Africa depended on an
army of bumbling Yanks as an enemy. Turns out
the GIs learned quickly from their rookie mistakes.
The vaunted Afrika Korps was stalled outside Tebessa
and 21st Panzer was stuck, well short of its objective,
Sbiba. Both pinned down by Allied fire.
It's Sunday and time had run out.
Rommel's final move was 10th Panzer to take Thala.
The breakthrough must be here and now or this
entire adventure would be a colossal waste.
It's either stampede the Yanks or be caught in a vise,
ground down between two imposing Allied armies.
10th Panzer was too big to be stopped.
Troops defending Thala worked frantically to get
their men and equipment in place and ready.
They needed more time.
General Dunphie's orders were to slow Rommel down.
Make the panzers pay dearly for every foot they advanced.
Dunphie's Valentine tanks would have to go toe-to-toe,
exchanging blows with German tanks that were a
few armored classes better than Dunphie's best.
Buying time meant sacrificing the tankers manning
those Valentines.
The Yanks were a worthy opponent, according to
Rommel. Not as good as the Brits, but they were
learning. Even as American GIs were running
from him at Kasserine, Rommel marveled at
the equipment they abandoned. He was positively
jealous, and concerned. He had no idea the Yankee
military could be so well stocked. And with quality
equipment, as well. He'd never seen anything like it.
He remarked about knocking out 40 Sherman tanks
and in a couple of days they had all been replaced.
It was like his victory counted for nothing.
Here was a general frustrated.
He had no answer for this onslaught of military plenty.
It was a soggy experience for everyone at Kasserine.
You were doused by heavy rains and you slogged
your way through thick mud daily.
That held true for Sunday - day of the final assault
on Thala. Dunphie's armor did battle and fell back
throughout the day, until they reached the Allied
final line of defense. Dunphie's jeep was the last
vehicle through. That should be it. But wait.
Here comes a Valentine up the road.
Must be stragglers. Let them in.
Big mistake.
It's the old Trojan Horse ploy.
They were waved on through.
The Nazis captured this Valentine, then drove it
right through the Allied defense. Rommel's
armor quickly followed. A melee erupted.
It was chaotic, with tanks and soldiers running about,
firing point blank into one another. All the while brilliant
flairs drifted down from above giving the view below
a stark light of almost black and white. After three hours
both sides retreated from the fight, exhausted.
The battle was a draw.
Thala held.
The clouds parted on Monday.
Rommel looked upward and saw overhead hundreds
of Allied planes flying about blue skies,
busy bombing and strafing his men.
Kasserine was over. Rommel needed to get his troops
to Mareth. There was no time to lose.
The map shows why Mareth was so important.
The front line was both fortified and narrow.
Any flanking attempt by Montgomery would be
channeled through a roundabout pass that should
be easily defended. But for how long? Time was
still Rommel's enemy. Each day new troops, tanks
and planes arrived to strengthen the Allied position
in Tunisia. Rommel got driblets and empty promises
by comparison, because Germany had problems
with their war in Russia.
Hitler was losing.
Arnim was right. Rommel's plan was too ambitious.
The fuel and supplies wouldn't be there for all
he wanted to do. Rommel knew this but that just
made his venture a longshot. Unfortunately,
every strategy available to the Axis in North Africa
required some longshot maneuver to avoid defeat.
That maneuver was lost at Kasserine.
In Rommel's mind North Africa was gone.
Italy would be the next battlefield.
Imagine how that would go over with
Mussolini or Hitler.
Rommel was just naive enough to take on
that task.
* * * * *
© Tom Taylor
OVER EASY
Sunday, March 2, 2025
Saturday, March 1, 2025
Rommel at Kasserine
1943 Feb 19 Friday
British General Alexander takes command of the
Allied ground forces in Tunisia. Retreat -
moving backwards stops here and now.
Allied backs were to the wall. A Rommel breakthrough
anywhere along this Western Dorsal and the Allies
were finished in Tunisia. They would have to evacuate
to somewhere next door in Algeria.
How satisfying it would be to see the bigshot
Yanks running off, tail between their legs.
But that wasn't yet happening.
Especially not at Sbiba.
Task Force Stark was assigned to stop Rommel
at Kasserine. The Force was mostly engineers,
plus rounding up a hodge-podge of stray military
units. They were run off, but not before stopping
Rommel's thrust through Kasserine Pass for 2 days.
Time was precious, like desert water.
Montgomery's Eighth Army was already probing
Rommel's thin defenses back at Mareth.
His plan was to route the Yanks from Tunisia then
race back to Mareth, in time to meet Montgomery's
main attack. Rommel's schedule required most
everything to go his way. It wasn't the case.
1942 Feb 21 Sunday
Sunday's news had Rommel in a bad mood.
He was stalled most everywhere.
It was easy winning the battle of tanks with the Yanks.
Rommel was expert at maneuvering armor
on the open plain to his advantage.
It was his bread and butter.
Now he was fighting on terrain that heavily favored defense.
Mountain gorges channeled tanks into a sluggish
single file, a rich target for the enemy's artillery.
Rommel's enemy had suddenly become effective.
His 21st Panzer and Afrika Korps were both stopped
by stubborn dug-in defenses and artillery that
demonstrated devastating accuracy.
Rommel was boxed in. His panzers busy pounding
every road for an exit but no cigar. Thala, though,
looked promising. Getting there was a cake walk.
A battalion of poorly armed French infantry was all
that stood in the way of success. Until now.
10th Panzer took too long to get here. Only Rommel
appeared to appreciate the need for urgency.
His generals were sleepwalking by comparison.
He was constantly urging them on.
Pick up the pace! Pick up the pace!
Thala was low hanging fruit.
Rommel could have had it for free
if he had been more aggressive, less cautious,
a couple of days ago. So there it sat, virtually
undefended. Overlooked. The fog of war.
On the map above you see Irwin's artillery
rushing in from out of nowhere to save the town's
bacon, like a cavalry charge seen in some old West
cowboy adventure. They had traveled over 800 miles,
through bad weather and over slick roads, nonstop for
5 days, so they could be here now in order to make
a difference.
The teeth to Rommel's offense was supposed to have been
a battalion of Tiger I tanks. 24 of them. But they were
not available because they were busy with their
scheduled maintenance. It was General Arnim
getting in the last word in his fight with Rommel.
Desperate for armor, Rommel replaced the world's
best tank with an undernourished Italian knockoff -
a substitute thin in armor and short on pop.
Rommel's shark teeth became a mouth filled
with only molars, gnawing its way to victory.
Such was the descension among the top Nazi brass.
Divided command brought out the worst in rivals.
Rommel would now be awarded sole command
over Axis forces in North Africa. The split decision
stagnation was over. But was it in time?
* * * * *
© Tom Taylor
OVER EASY
Sunday, February 23, 2025
Saturday, February 22, 2025
Sbeitla
Somewhere in the West Point curriculum you'd think
there would be a lesson plan on how to successfully
retreat after getting your butt kicked in battle. First,
don't run away in panic. Keep your unit together
as a team with the purpose to fight again another day.
That's easy to say. You best have the character
qualities needed to make it happen.
If your a dog-faced GI like Willie and Joe in the cartoons
your job doesn't change when you lose but your attitude
definitely does. It's dark, nasty humor material.
The masterminds of this catastrophe would be probed
as to why things went so off the charts bad.
But they first had to survive this disaster.
17 February, Wednesday dawn
The panzers should be plowing into Sbeitla about now.
Instead they were responding to Yanks escaping from
the Ksaira hilltop. Intense machine gun and mortar fire,
followed up by tanks moving in, quickly brought
the Yankees' big escape episode to a close.
The panzer assault on Sbeitla resumed around noon;
too late to catch the last of the Yanks vacating the town.
The U.S. 1st Armored division was divvied up and
off in different directions. McQuillin's CCA was fortifying
itself outside Sbiba. CCB, Combat Command B, was
on the road to Thala. 1st Armored HQ was headed to
Tebessa - the nerve center of the Allied front.
Two newly constructed airbases critical to Allied defense
were now in German hands. These were Rommel's men,
the Afrika Korps, up from the coast to the south.
The first elements of Montgomery's Eighth Army were
beginning to arrive opposite the Axis fortification at Mareth.
Rommel believed a skeletal crew would be all the defense
they needed, while the Afrika Korps was off destroying
the Yanks.
Victory in Tunis meant crushing the Yankees now,
before the Axis force was overwhelmed by the
constant arrival of new American units.
Rommel figured he had a 50-50 chance to succeed.
He liked his odds.
The roads out of Sbeitla were hopelessly clogged
with supply trucks, marching troops and refugees.
The Luftwaffe dive-bombers were busy adding to
the chaos. U.S. Army engineers spent the day blowing
up immense divisional stores of fuel, ammo and supplies.
It was chaos and explosions. It felt like doomsday
to newly arrived troops. Rumors abounded
with dreadful news. Here's where the officers
needed to be seen and heard. Command and control.
Everyone needed to know someone was in charge.
The panzers entered the wrecked town of Sbeitla,
empty of its inhabitants and the American military.
It's here the highway forked. To the right the road
led to Sbiba and to the left was Kasserine pass.
There would be more than a hundred tanks
in the area by morning, if all went as planned.
Rommel cannot get past Thala, Sbiba or Tebessa.
The Allied defense was based upon availability.
Find warm bodies to fill the gaps. Improvise.
It was open tank country beyond any of those three
points. Rommel would then be up against the
greenest of Allied troops all the way to Bone, his
coastal destination. Rommel versus the Hardy Boys.
The meager Allied forces in the area couldn't
let that happen.
Rommel needed Arnim's panzers for his assault.
It took Field Marshal Kesselring's intervention
to wrest from Arnim two panzer divisions vital
to Rommel's attacks on Sbiba and Kasserine.
Arnim had a personal war going with Rommel.
This animosity would be a factor in determining
the coming battle's outcome. There were
others more important, like a critical lack of
supplies. Rommel knew all this but it wouldn't
matter.
The Germans found themselves outnumbered
and cornered. They were left with relying on
a Hail Mary pass as their only chance at winning.
Their victory was to be bright but brief.
* * * * *
© Tom Taylor
OVER EASY
Sunday, February 16, 2025
Saturday, February 15, 2025
Sidi Bou Zid
Sunday's Panzer beating of US forces
was done by a diversionary force and it was
not the main attack, according to Allied brass
at HQ. The real effort was yet to come further
north. That was why the commander of
1st Armored Division ordered only a battalion
size counterattack for the next morning.
50 Sherman tanks should be enough to handle
whatever lay waiting for them down the road
at Sidi Bou Zid.
Not quite. The Allied generals were deceived
by a German head fake. And the punch wasn't
going to be a jab but a roundhouse right.
Rommel intended to route the beejeebers out of the
amateur American army. He would have them
running all the way back to Casablanca.
That was the greeting Rommel had planned for
the inexperienced Yanks.
Wreckage of all sorts would become the price of
having to learn from one's mistakes.
The counterattack wasn't underway until after noon.
Chaos created by a German dive bomber attack
took two hours to straighten out.
Attacking Sidi Bou Zid was a three company
wedge of the new M4 Sherman tanks.
These were direct from Detroit, where they
would be produced by the thousands.
By contrast the Germans could manage to
produce no more than a dozen Tiger tanks
a week. They were simply too difficult to make.
Flank security was provided by these
tank destroyer halftracks, running along
side the tanks. The shells they fired weren't
designed to penetrate German tank armor.
It didn't help morale when the rounds fired
bounced useless off the enemy tank.
12:40 pm.
Steep-sided desert gullies were obstacles to
Ward's armored formation. So were the Luftwaffe
pilots, busy divebombing once again overhead.
Tanks scattered and chaos ensued. The attack
timetable was further set back. But it wouldn't
much matter. Yankee tankers would soon deal
with far bigger worries.
There isn't time to hook a howitzer to a truck
when a tank is coming. Artillery needs to move
quick, along with the tanks, on an armored battlefield.
3:15 pm
Shells coming in from German artillery hidden
behind Sidi Bou Zid. Panzer tanks, 15 of them,
spring from the village and race directly toward
the charging Shermans.
Jeeps chauffer officers. Army halftracks do
most everything else. They were a Hummer on steroids.
Here it provided the platform for antiaircraft guns.
Other times it would carry the GIs needed for
infantry tank protection. Tanks were nearly blind.
Enemy troops could easily sneak up on them and
carry out their bad intentions.
3:25 pm
14 German tanks appeared suddenly from the shadows
of Lassouda. Dive-bombers struck again.
Still more panzers appeared and joined the fray.
Nothing like disaster to clear your mind.
The Americans had fallen into a trap.
German panzer tanks waited patiently for
the American tank formation to arrive.
A battalion of Shermans charged into the teeth
of two panzer divisions. This became the live-fire
lesson plan for the day.
In two days two battalions of tanks were wiped out,
as were two artillery battalions. And two entire
infantry battalions were swallowed up by a
sea of German troops.
Americans needed a whole new game plan.
Rommel was about to blow through the door.
* * * * *
© Tom Taylor
OVER EASY
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