How artillery beat Rommel after Kasserine

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

Much has been written about the North African campaigns of the US Army, from the November 1942 Operation Torch landings in French Morocco and Algeria on through to the May 1943 conclusion in Tunisia where the Germans were thrust out of North Africa by the Allied forces of America, Great Britain and the Free French. The Thala Battle, immediately after our disaster at Kasserine, was neither a long nor large one, but it was the turning point in North Africa, avenging Kasserine. At Thala, without the 9th Div Arty, the outnumbered and outgunned defenders certainly would have been overrun. The Germans retreated from Thala Pass and, just under three months later, from North Africa.

Endnotes:

(1.) Intervlew with George I. Connolly, Marblehead, MA. Second Lieutenant/ Reconnaissance Officer. B Battery, 34th Field Artillery, 9th IN Div. The 9th Division was strung out over a wide area and not a unified, cohesive division until the end of the North African Campaign.

(2.) Interview with Leon "Buck" Birum, Union City, IN, First Lieutenant/Executive Officer, B/34 FA/9th IN Div.

(3.) George F. Howe, Northwest Africa: Seizing the Initiative (Fort McNair, Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 1957), Pub, 6-1, 466.

(4.) Ibid., 407.

(5.) Captain Joseph B. Mittleman, Eight Stars to Victory: History of the Veteran 9th Infantry Division (Washington. DC: Ninth Infantry Division Association, 1948), 89-91.

(6.) General Omar Bradley, A Soldier's Story (New York: Holt, 1985), 27.

(7.) Interview with Donald L. Harrison. Colorado Springs. CO. Second Lieutenant/Forward Observer, B/34 FA/9th IN Div.

(8.) Interview with Sheldon Stoddard. Portsmouth, NH, First Sergeant. B/34 FA/9th IN Div.

(9.) Martin Blumenson, Kasserine Pass (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin. 1967), 273.

(10.) Interview with John Lannon, Pawtucket, RI. First Lieutenant/Forward Observer, B/34 FA/9th IN Div.

(11.) Interview with (now deceased) Bert C. Waller, Poway, CA, First Lieutenant/Communications Officer, HQ Battery, Div Arty. 9th IN Div.

(12.) Bert C. Waller, Commanders We Knew, 9th infantry Division in World War II (Privately Published, October 1990), 5.

(13.) lbld., 99; interview with Edward Winsch, Garden City, NY, and Aaron Lubin. Fresh Meadows, NY, C Battery/84th FA/9th IN Div.; Lubin, "The Battle of Thala, "Octofoil, 9th Infantry Division Association Newspaper, August-September, 1997.

(14.) "The AAF in Northwest Africa, "Army Air Force Wings at War Series, (Washington, DC: Center for Air Force History, 1992), No.6,29-36; Blumenson, 7-81.

(15.) Mittleman, 91. The citation reads, in part, "Although enemy forces were entrenched only 2,500 yards distant and there were only three platoons of friendly infantry in front of the artillery, the unit maintained constant and steady fire with such deadly effect that enemy tanks units were dispersed and driven back. The cool and determined manner in which...9th Division Artillery entered into battle after an almost icredible forced march contributed in great measure to the defeat of the enemy's attempt to break through the Thala defile."