This was the very scenario imagined by the brain trust back in the Tank Destroyer Command. Now was the time for the tank destroyer battalions to sweep to the penetration and annihilate the panzers. There was only one problem. The companies and even platoons of the only battalions in the vicinity—the 701st, 601st, and newly arrived 805th—were scattered like thrown pebbles across the front.
Responding to battle reports during the morning hours, II Corps shifted a single company—A/805th Tank Destroyer Battalion—and an attached reconnaissance platoon from Feriana to Sbeitla.20
At 1930 hours, 1st Armored Division artillery reported that one of its officers had established contact with the 805th Tank Destroyer Battalion. They were discussing a plan for offensive operations by the outfit to back up the shaky line.21
The remnants of CCA rallied at dusk near Djebel Hamra and reorganized for the defense of Sbeitla. Allied commanders underestimated the size of the German offensive and decided to keep CCB near Fondouk. Nevertheless, in accordance with previous assessments that Gafsa could not be held against a major assault, they ordered an orderly evacuation of the town for the night of 14–15 February. The tank destroyers of B/805th had only just arrived in the vicinity on 9 February, their first deployment at the front. The TDs had taken up positions at Zannuch Station about twenty miles east of Gafsa. Almost daily, a few enemy tanks appeared at a distance and retired after exchanging a few rounds with the M3s. The company screened the evacuation of Gafsa and was the last unit to leave the town.22
Just after noon on 15 February, CCC/1st Armored Division, reinforced by the 2d Battalion of 1st Armored Regiment and led by Reconnaissance Company of the 701st Tank Destroyer Battalion, counterattacked from assembly areas northeast of Djebel Hamra in the direction of Sidi bou Zid thirteen miles away.23
Lieutenant Arthur Edson and the men of B/701st mounted their vehicles. “Glasscock, follow Milo!” Edson bellowed. The TDs would move so frequently over the next ten days—and Edson yell that order as many times— that the phrase would become a company slogan.
Combat Command C advanced through clear, dry afternoon air, raising clouds of dust behind it. Tanks took the lead. The tank destroyers of 3d Platoon, under Capt Robert Whitsit, took up position on the right flank, while Lieutenant Edson’s vehicles swung behind the center with orders to move to the left flank if needed. 1st Platoon protected the rear.
Repeated German air strikes slowed the advance. The official U.S. Army history records that one of the TD platoons was destroyed in a Stuka attack on the village of Sadaguia. If men died there, they were not from the tank destroyer force.
The tanks became engaged in a wild battle against emplaced 88s and panzers. The Germans executed a well-conceived multi-pronged envelopment, striking around the flanks toward the American rear. Whitsit’s platoon engaged German tanks that appeared on the south flank. A few moments later, a panzer column led by Tigers maneuvered to cut off escape from the north. German practice was to put a Tiger at the center of an attacking formation with lighter tanks on the wings; one flank of the formation would be stronger than the other.24 Edson ordered his M3s into action. They could see the panzers, but the only passage across an intervening wadi was blocked by a crippled American tank. The tank killers took up position under some trees and opened fire at long range. Whitsit’s TDs returned to help deal with this more serious threat.
A third German tank column appeared, and the command found itself under fire from four different directions. Fortunately, the radios worked this time, and Company B received orders to extricate itself.
All elements that were not too far forward beat a hasty retreat westward. During what the TD men would later characterize as a rout, one M6 and one jeep were abandoned. Remarkably, only one man in Company B had been hurt, a gun commander in Edson’s platoon who fell victim to a shell that burst over the hood of his M3. When the day was over, only four American tanks had returned from the inferno. The 1st Armored Division had lost an entire tank battalion.
Late on 15 February, Lieutenant General Anderson instructed II Corps to withdraw to the Western Dorsale mountain range and insure the security of Sbeitla, Kasserine, and Feriana.25 Accordingly, the 1st Armored Division gave ground, under orders from II Corps to use tank destroyers from the 701st and infantry as the rear guard. That night, LtCol John Waters was captured as his command tried to exfiltrate from Djebel Lessouda.
Delaying Actions: Sbeitla and Feriana
By 16 February, the 1st Armored Division had pulled back to Sbeitla, where it prepared to make a stand. It had already lost nearly one hundred tanks, almost two hundred men killed or wounded, and nearly one thousand men missing or captured.26
Combat Command B—with the 601st Tank Destroyer Battalion (less Company C and Reconnaissance Company) in tow—rejoined the division and rushed to shore up the other battered elements gathered at Sbeitla. Combat commands A and C manned the northern half of the division’s defensive arc before Sbeitla, and CCB moved into positions to the south. Fredendall verbally ordered Ward to hold the line there at all costs until 1100 hours, 17 February, an order subsequently amended to an indefinite period. The Allies needed time to move British forces and the American 34th Infantry Division to Sbiba and Thala, northwest of the breakthrough; bring the American 9th Infantry Division’s artillery forward to support them; and concentrate the 16th Regimental Combat Team (RCT) of the 1st Infantry Division at a new line to the rear.
As panzers probed the defenses late on 16 February, Lieutenant Colonel Hightower commanded a screening force in front of the CCA and CCC units just moving into position. Two platoons of Company B, 701st Tank Destroyer Battalion, participated in an effort to extricate the 6th Armored Infantry, which had been unable to disengage from the enemy. The maneuver succeeded, but the TDs became embroiled in a rear-guard action against three German tank columns, during which the tank destroyers were cut off.
The rest of Company B had spent the day searching out firing positions until ordered to deploy in a cactus patch with no field of fire whatsoever. Hidden by the plants, Lieutenant Edson and the rest of men were unaware that German armored columns passed to the north and south in the evening gloom.
Lacking orders to withdraw and unable to contact combat command headquarters where the battalion CO had gone in search of instructions, the battalion executive officer, Major Walter Tardy, ordered battalion elements to escape if they could. He could not reach Company B by radio, so he told Company A to find a Company B patrol to pass the instructions. About midnight, the tank destroyers dispersed and filtered back to American lines under heavy machine-gun fire. Following a route scouted by the pioneer platoon, the men drove through or around various obstacles and wadis that they never would have attempted in daylight. Machine-gun tracers paralleled one column on both sides. Most of the TDs crept into Sbeitla by dawn. The town presented a picture of crowded confusion as the TDs worked their way through the streets amidst exploding German shells.27
Captain Redding led Company C into Sbeitla somewhat later and found the town deserted. He contacted division headquarters to offer the services of his six remaining guns but was told to get off the net. He next radioed the combat command, which instructed him to take up positions at a spot that by now was behind German lines. Redding wisely joined the rest of the battalion west of Sbeitla.28
At 0314 hours on 17 February, 1st Armored Division transmitted to all subordinate units, “We are going to hold. Use every available trick you know. We are going to stick here. We will lick those bastards yet.”29
German troops attacked in force at 0900 hours.30 CCB had deployed the men of the 601st Tank Destroyer Battalion in an outpost line a few miles east of the main line of resistance.31 The tank killers were strafed there by Allied aircraft and shelled by American artillery during the morning.32 About 1145, the 601st reported that its command post was under attack by fifty tanks from one direction and a combined tank-infantry force from another. Lieutenant Colonel Herschel Baker requested reinforcements but was told to fall back on American lines, fighting a delaying action as he came.33 Some of the TDs fired smoke and were able to shift about and maintain fire for about half an hour, but the
