How artillery beat Rommel after Kasserine

FA Journal, May-August, 2002 by Robert C. Baldridge

Irwin had positioned himself up on the front ridge of the British forward observation post (OP) overlooking the advancing Germans. Irwin made this forward Allied OP his forward command post for all the artillery in the area. (12) A unit of British artillery already there was preparing to direct fire on the Germans on the downward slope of the ridge.

Irwin knew that Captain William F. McGonagal's C Battery, 84th Artillery, had practiced direct fire by bore sighting. (13) (Bore sighting is not just looking through or along the tube, it consists of making the optical axis of the gunner's panoramic telescope parallel to the line-of-sight through the center of the tube using various instruments and methods.)

So Irwin called the four 105-mm guns of C Battery up to the ridge to go into action. Two of its guns were hit and put out of action that day, but not before the battery had destroyed two enemy Mark IV tanks plus lighter vehicles and accompanying infantry.

In addition to being shelled, the defenders were subjected to bombing by German Stuka dive-bombers throughout the day, although cloudy skies had limited both German air operations and those of the US XII Fighter Command. (14)

The artillery kept up a steady and relentless "drumfire" on the Germans--so much so that by later that afternoon, the howitzer ammunition was 15 minutes away from being exhausted. By the end of the next day, the 9th Div Arty suffered 45 casualties, including eight killed. It had fired 1,904 rounds.

When the 9th Artillery started firing on the morning of 22 February, German General von Broich quickly was informed that the larger blasts were obviously 155-mm howitzers. He also knew from Arab spies that troop movements had come into the pass area the previous night. Knowing that 155-mms were an integral part of an infantry division's artillery, he became mistakenly convinced that an entire new infantry division had arrived.

His men were tired and under strength from their Kasserine fighting, and he thought they could not withstand a fresh enemy division on the scene. He and his 10th Panzer Division stopped. With Rommel's approval, von Broich ordered his troops to withdraw back east from where they came.

Rommel, a sick man at that time, also was disillusioned by his arguments with General von Armin in the northern sector. Von Armin was not cooperating with the new command arrangements where he came under Rommel's command. Von Armin pulled back his troops that were threatening Tebessa.

As Allied reinforcements arrived daily in the Tebessa and Thala area, it was downhill from then on for the Germans in North Africa until their surrender on 13 May 1943.

The 9th Div Arty was awarded a distinguished unit citation for conspicuous gallantry and heroism in battle on 21, 22 and 23 February 1943. (15)

The Thala Battle, which one could say was won by the artillery, was America's first land victory over the Germans in World War II. It led to their surrender and withdrawal from North Africa and, thus, to a much safer opening of the Mediterranean and on to Sicily.