Page:Charles Robert Anderson - Tunisia - CMH Pub 72-12.djvu/8

 1st Battalion, 1st Armored Regiment, advanced with Blade Force; and four American units supported the 11th Group: the Reconnaissance/Intelligence platoon and the 2d Battalion (less Company E) of the 13th Armored Regiment, the 175th Field Artillery Battalion, and Company C of the 701st Tank Destroyer Battalion.

Anxious to push east before Axis forces became any stronger, Evelegh began moving his troops into jump-off positions on 16 November. The next day a British unit guarding a bridge and highway intersection at Djebel Abiod, on the route soon to be used by the 36th Infantry Brigade Group, clashed with a German-Italian armored column moving west. In a three-hour fight, the first of the Tunisia Campaign, the Allies lost more men than the Axis but drove the enemy back toward Bizerte with a loss of eight tanks. For the next week similar encounters occurred at several sites as both sides tried to determine the location of each other's forward elements and to break up concentrations of men and equipment that could evolve into attack spearheads. Despite these actions and German air raids on Allied positions as far west as Algiers, Evelegh had his three brigades in position by 24 November.

The Allied attack began the night of 24–25 November when the 11th Infantry Brigade Group troops set out on the southern axis toward Medjez el Bab under bright moonlight. They were soon stopped by heavy fire and in daylight driven back with many casualties. A second element of the brigade was also stopped while approaching the town from another direction. To the Allies' surprise, however, the Germans withdrew the night of 25–26 November; after an artillery preparation, the troops walked into Medjez el Bab unopposed. Quickly moving east, the 11th Group took the town of Tebourba in the early hours of the 27th. The Germans fought the rest of the day but withdrew to Djedeida.

In the center Blade Force jumped off at 0700 on the 25th when more than one hundred British and American tanks rumbled east into a dusty sunrise. Within a few hours the 1st Battalion, 1st Armored Regiment, began meeting and pushing through light resistance from enemy reconnaissance patrols. The next day the first American-German tank battle of the war developed at the Chouigui Pass north of Tebourba. Skillfully coordinating infantry, antitank, and tank forces, the Americans knocked out seven German tanks and drove off enemy ground troops at a cost of six tanks.

On the northern axis the attack got off to a poor start when the 36th Infantry Brigade Group missed its H-hour by a full day. Finally