With the fall of Oran, the campaign in Algeria ended. The tank killers had “seen the elephant,” as the British called the first experience of combat. Lieutenant Colonel Waters obtained a captaincy for Whitsit in recognition of his performance, although with most of the battalion still in England, Bob Whitsit remained a platoon commander. Waters cautioned his men, however, “We did very well against the scrub team. Next week we hit the Germans. Do not slack off in anything. When we make a showing against them, you may congratulate yourselves.”31 He was not alone in his view. Patton told observers from Washington that had the landings been opposed by Germans, “we never would have gotten ashore.”32
On 11 November, the 701st Tank Destroyer Battalion and elements of Combat Command B were detached and ordered to proceed to Tunisia to join the British First Army. The tank killers of Company C were among the first to move. They arrived in the vicinity of Medjez el Bab by 24 November, at which time the command was attached to the Blade Force, British 78th Infantry Division.33
Several days later, the rest of the 601st Tank Destroyer Battalion (except for Company B, which was delivered to Algiers by mistake) joined Recon Company at Oran under the watchful eye of LtCol Hershel Baker. The two-hundred pound, roly-poly CO had a cherubic face, but he spoke with a foghorn voice and was a ball of fire. The World War I veteran had scheduled a beer party for the entire battalion the day he took command in December 1941. He had a taste for booze and gambling, and he was both a showman and something of a martinet with his officers. But Baker was “proud as hell” of his outfit.34
The battalion bivouacked at St. Lucien, where the men had their first taste of the exotic: “prowling,
Tunisia: The War Begins in Earnest
Major General Orlando Ward, 1st Armored Division’s commanding general, described Tunisia in a letter to Armored Force chief LtGen Jacob Devers. “First, the country is bigger than anyone can imagine—great wide expanses of plains and jagged, rugged mountains, and in many cases up-turned rocks standing up in the middle of the plains. Many of the hills and plains are tank-proof, although some are rolling and smooth, over which tanks can pass without difficulty. Dry wadies cut the plains, which are dotted with Arab huts and adobe houses. There are a good many trees on the mountains but few elsewhere.”36
German combat aircraft and a handful of troops began landing at an airfield near Tunis on 9 November, the first of fifteen thousand reinforcements—including one hundred tanks—that arrived by the end of the month. Nine thousand Italian troops also moved in, most having shifted west from Tripoli. British forces, meanwhile, advanced from Algiers by land and short seaborne and airborne hops. Thanks in part to the Axis incursion, the Allies persuaded the French in North Africa to join their cause as combatants on 13 November. On 17 November, a German parachute battalion encountered French holding forces and the British spearhead at Medjez el Bab. The bold German commander bluffed the Allied forces into pulling back.37
Medjez el Bab lay only ten minutes flying time from the hard-surfaced German airfields around Tunis. Allied reinforcements, supplies, and air support had to make a three hundred fifty-mile journey to the new front. Allied fighters could loiter only ten minutes over the battlefield and operated off dirt airstrips, which any rain quickly turned to muck.38 And starting in late November, there were downpours aplenty in Algeria and Tunisia as unseasonable wet weather preceded the expected rainy season by two months.
For Combat Command B and the elements of the 701st Tank Destroyer Battalion, the trek was even farther to Medjez el Bab: seven hundred miles from Oran. Departing on 16 November, Companies B and C of the 701st arrived the following day in Algiers where, much to their surprise, the company COs were greeted by Eisenhower. The Allied commander explained to Capt Frank Redding and Capt Gilbert Ellmann—commanding Companies B and C, respectively—that he had wanted to meet the first American troops sent to the Tunisian sector. The next morning, the company commanders met with British LtGen Kenneth Anderson, commander of the British forces pushing toward Tunis. Anderson told them that transportation bottlenecks were dramatically slowing the deployment of tank units to the front, while the tank destroyers were light enough to make the journey on their own. The pressing need for additional forces was why such high-level officers were so personally interested in the activities of two humble companies.39
Companies B and C of the 701st traveled together over curved mountain roads as far as Souk Aras, where Company B turned aside for Tebessa on 21 November.
The Main Effort: Fighting Around Medjez el Bab
Company C continued to Souk el Arba and arrived mid-afternoon on 22 November. The men received a warm welcome from the Luftwaffe: Twelve Me-109 fighter-bombers and six Ju-87 Stuka dive-bombers bombed and strafed the company assembly area, as well as the headquarters of the British 78th Infantry Division and a nearby airfield. Six Me-109s attacked again forty-five minutes later as the company drove to its bivouac at Bulla Regia. The company lost one halftrack.40
Indeed, the famous bent-winged Stuka, the screaming terror of the blitzkrieg in Poland and France, was very much in evidence from the front all the way back to Algiers, as were Ju-88 bombers. The Stuka had yet to become the sitting duck for Allied fighters that it would when the Luftwaffe lost air supremacy. For now, Germany’s Me-109 and FW-190 fighters enjoyed the edge. Moreover, invasion planners had given low priority to antiaircraft formations, often removing them from convoys to make room for other units, a philosophy that resulted in a general shortage of antiaircraft artillery (AAA) into 1943. The AAA units that landed were often unfamiliar with just-issued equipment, poorly trained, and had not exercised with other arms.41 Official observers reported an “almost complete lack of air-ground cooperation” on the American side.42
On 23 November, Capt Frank Redding reported to Brigadier Cass, commander of the British 11th Infantry Brigade. The brigade group made up the southernmost of a three-prong British advance toward Tunis. The 36th Infantry Brigade was pushing eastward on a road roughly ten miles inland from the coast, while Blade Force advanced along the center axis. All three British commands were to receive help from elements of CCB. Cass informed Redding that his forces had made contact with unidentified German units of unknown strength somewhere east of Beja in the broad Oued Medjerda Valley. The command was preparing to advance, and Cass expected the American tank destroyers to participate in an attack the next day. During the conversation, three enemy fighters attacked the brigade CP.43
Arriving in Beja by mid-day on 23 November, Company C received orders to secure the high ground west of Medjez el Bab with the help of two British bren carrier-mounted infantry platoons from the Surrey Battalion. The Americans determined that they would not be able to communicate by radio with the British because of incompatible gear. No reconnaissance of the area had been conducted by the British, which meant that the small mixed command would function as brigade reconnaissance. Lacking effective protection against air attack, Redding decided to space his thirty-five vehicles out over the length of some five miles.44
The command moved out at 1300 hours. On either side, rolling hills gave way to steep heights cut by wadis. The bren carriers led. The M6 light TDs followed by some two hundred yards and conducted reconnaissance by fire to the flanks with machine guns and 37mm cannons. Just past the crest of the last rise before the town of Medjez el Bab, the advancing force encountered a roadblock, which at first appeared to be undefended. Heavy and accurate 81mm mortar fire quickly disabused the men of their mistaken impression. Four of the thin-skinned bren carriers were disabled in the initial barrage, and the rest scuttled to cover.
