| |
|
|
|
| First Division soldiers on their way to North Africa |
After the 1st Division organized and trained stateside, it was the first full division to be sent overseas into the European theater for active duty. After staging in the English countryside southwest of London for combat training and undergoing extensive amphibious landing practices in Scotland, the men were then alerted to prepare for movement to North Africa. The only hint about what was to come was heard from one the division's regimental commanders when he told his men in his firm southern accent, “Gentleman, we’re a goin’ fightin!”
As part of a two hundred ship convoy, the division headed out of the English Channel on October 27, 1942 into leaden-gray skies and rough seas, zigzagging off the Spanish coast in a generally southern direction towards the entrance of the Mediterranean at the Straits of Gibraltar. Once inside, the ships headed for the port city of Oran on the north coast of Africa where the division took this first objective of the European offensives as planned. The men were then told by their commander, Major General Terry Allen, that this was just the initial phase of a long series of operations and, "Nothing in hell must stop or delay the First Division!"
But, one thing did. The division was broken up after the Battle for Oran and parceled out to other under-equipped units. One regiment was assigned to a British brigade and subsequently planted its colors on the Tunisian front, where hundreds of its officers and men died at the Battle for Longstop Hill on Christmas Day in 1942.
With too much blood in the soaked mud of the battlefield after this, these tattered units spent the early part of the rainy, cold Tunisian winter bogged down in the hills around Medjez, where the Germans had built up strong points in the highest locations, making advancement practically impossible. Meantime, Field Marshall Erwin Rommel's Afrika Corps had been methodically building up around the thinly held positions of the scattered and dispersed elements of the rest of the First Division and other Allied units between Algeria and Tunisia. In mid-February of 1943, the Germans launched an offensive designed to smash these positions and split all US and British forces in two.
With the full force of Rommel's amassed panzer units and the German Fifth Army, he attacked at Kasserine Pass. These bloody battles left nearly 6,200 casualties on the desert floor, but as General Allen said in a letter to his wife, "When things were looking worse, the good old Fighting First was hurriedly pushed to meet the Germans at a critical point where their fortification was strong. It was said that the vigorous defense and aggressive co-ordinated attack of the First Division really turned the trick and started a general withdrawl in every sector."
But, the infamous battles at Kasserine Pass drew mixed reviews from those in higher command, and change came quickly. General George S. Patton arrived to take over the command of the corps that the division was fighting in, and the Big Red One was finally reassembled as a unit for the first time since it was broken up after the Battle for Oran.
In what General Omar Bradley called in his memoirs, "the first indisputable defeat we inflicted on the German army in the war," the costly Battle for El Guettar found the First Division fighting continuously for twenty-two straight days in late March and early April of 1943. It was a no holes barred slugging match with hand-to-hand combat and sharp maneuvering, but the division's officers and men firmly destroy the pride of Rommel's Afrika Corps, the 10th SS Panzer Division.
After this, the division could not be stopped. During the final push for victory in North Africa, the Fighting First fought its way across treacherous hills with direct frontal assaults against elite German units that had been ordered to fight to the last man. During the final battles on the Plains of Mateur in early May, General Allen told his wife in another letter, "We are fighting the best that Rommel has and have fought our way inch by inch through very desperate resistance. It has been a slugging match so far, and one or the other has to break first. You may be assured it will not be the First Division."
Several days later, the Germans surrendered nearly a quarter of a million men to Allied forces in North Africa. In all, the First Division fought for 115 days in the four month North African war. Before Taps Sounded presents this conflict and the training movements before it over 125 pages in these chapters:
Over Here
Over There!
The Battle for Oran
The Drive Into Tunisia
The Casablanca Conference
Kasserine Pass
The Arrival of George S. Patton
Retaliation at El Guettar
The Final Push |
| |
