Page:Charles Robert Anderson - Tunisia - CMH Pub 72-12.djvu/17

 dissension appeared in the Alliance when the French protested ineffective American support.

While Eisenhower struggled to contain squabbles on the Allied side, the Germans refueled their tanks and continued west. On the 14th they hit Sidi Bou Zid, ten miles beyond Faid. With over 200 tanks on both sides, a huge, drawn-out battle appeared in the making. But American armor was spread too thin, and the panzers punched through in only one day. An ineffective counterattack the next day and the stunning capture of some 1,400 troops forced the Americans to undertake a major withdrawal. As the 1st Armored Division fell back, enemy pressure eased. However, on the 16th the panzers resumed their westward push, seizing Sbeitla, twenty-five miles beyond Sidi Bou Zid. Again the Americans scrambled back to establish a new defensive position, this time at Kasserine Pass. Four days of successive defeats cost II Corps dearly. The Americans lost 2,546 missing, 103 tanks, 280 vehicles, 18 field guns, 3 antitank guns, and 1 antiaircraft battery. Even service and medical companies, miles behind the infantry and armor, had been reached by the onrushing panzers.

The succession of II Corps defeats did not end with the loss of Sbeitla. Rommel saw the opportunity to keep his battered adversary reeling with a push for an even bigger prize: Kasserine Pass, gateway to Algeria. Adding the 10th and 21st Panzer Divisions to his German-Italian Panzer Army, Rommel struck the II Corps on 19 February. By the next afternoon the pass was in Axis hands. Only the valiant stands of individual battalions and companies on isolated hilltops interrupted Rommel's progress. As an alarming indication of falling morale, American troops abandoned huge stocks of equipment. In a final insult, the disastrous series of defeats was ended not by stiffening American resolve but by a shift in Axis priorities. Concerned that the British Eighth Army might attack from Libya while he was moving west, Rommel turned back to the east.

The conduct of Allied operations in both northern Tunisia in December 1942 and the central mountain ranges in February 1943 forced a total reexamination of Allied organization and plans. In short order General Eisenhower restructured the Allied command and changed key personnel. A new command—the 18th Army Group under British General Sir Harold R. L. G. Alexander—tightened operational control over the combat corps and armies of the three Allied nations. With the British Eighth Army now close enough to the Allied southern flank to affect Axis operations, the three national commands in Tunisia narrowed their battlefronts and shifted north. Because the U.S. II Corps had taken high casualties and lost so much