Sicily '43. James Holland

already shown plenty of signs of his remarkable talents. His upbringing could scarcely have been more humble. Born in Texas, he had been raised from an early age in the tiny rail halt town of Abilene, Kansas, in America’s Midwest. Both studious and athletic, he had worked hard, won a place at West Point, the US Army Military Academy, and slowly but surely risen up the ranks by dint of hard work, a meticulous eye for detail, a highly organized brain and no small amount of charm and graciousness. Unlike contemporaries such as Patton or Mark Clark, he had not made it to the Western Front in the last war and had, by 1942, yet to command troops in battle, but had instead shown early promise as a highly competent staff officer.

      After a stint serving with General Douglas MacArthur in the Philippines, he had returned to Washington and caught the eye of General George Marshall, who in September 1939 had become the Chief of Staff, the United States’ most senior serviceman. Eisenhower had won further good notices for his part in organizing the Louisiana Maneuvers in 1941, the largest exercises of their kind up to that point, so that once America was in the war, he was an obvious candidate for higher command.

      Eisenhower and Clark had reached London still believing their brief was to mount Operation SLEDGEHAMMER. This was to be a cross-Channel invasion of France, to capture a key port, establish a bridgehead and then use it to break out with a bigger operation – ROUNDUP – in 1943. Yet it soon became clear to them that, despite promises to Molotov from Roosevelt and Marshall, the British had no intention of attempting such an undertaking. That there were still two entirely different strategic agendas as late as July 1942 underlined the gulf between the British and the Americans, who – though widely referred to as ‘the Allies’ – were at this point still only coalition partners rather than bound by a formal alliance. Both Britain’s and America’s war leaders had to feel their way into this new relationship. And, for all the Americans’ gung-ho enthusiasm to strike swiftly at the heart of the Reich, there was no doubt the British had a point. There was a lack of shipping, they argued, and also a shortage of landing craft – new vessels were being built but there were not yet enough. What’s more, no American troops had ever fought against a German panzer division, and many US infantrymen had not even seen a tank yet, let alone trained with one. Failure would have a disastrous knock-on effect for ROUNDUP the following year.

      By mid-July, SLEDGEHAMMER had been scrapped; but the promise made to Molotov hung over the Americans, and so Churchill once again raised the prospect of a joint Anglo-US invasion of French north-west Africa. On 24 July, with Roosevelt’s approval, this was agreed in principle: it meant the Americans could keep their promise to the Soviets, the operation would not need as many landing craft or warships as a cross-Channel invasion, and it could, as Churchill had earlier suggested, give the new coalition partners a fairly safe opportunity to test the water of joint operations. An overall Allied commander would be needed for the entire operation, and General Alan Brooke, the British Chief of the Imperial General Staff, suggested it should be an American. The Brits also proposed that the landing operations in Algiers and French Morocco should be led by US troops, partly as an additional sop to the Americans and partly because Vichy French antipathy to Britain was still very strong after the sinking of the French fleet at Mers el-Kebir back in July 1940. This was all agreed, and so the new operation, codenamed TORCH, was now on. Eisenhower became the natural choice for overall commander, and was duly appointed with a promotion to lieutenant-general. Planning was carried out from Eisenhower’s headquarters in London and with a joint Anglo-US planning team getting down to the nitty-gritty.

      As a first foray into mounting such operations, TORCH certainly ticked the boxes outlined by Churchill when he first suggested it, and it was agreed it would take place on 8 November 1942, as a second punch following Eighth Army’s main attack on the Panzerarmee Afrika at Alamein on 23 October. By this time, General Bernard Montgomery, who had taken over command of Eighth Army in early August, had built up overwhelming strength, although the battle still turned out to be a bloody and attritional affair. None the less, by 3 November it was all over, Rommel’s forces fleeing back across the desert with the British in pursuit, and this time for good.

      Superb planning, led by General Mark Clark, ensured that TORCH was a success. Clark himself had made a clandestine visit to North Africa for pre-invasion talks with the Vichy French, which had gone some way to ensuring the opposition to the landings was extremely light. Even so, it was no small feat to land three separate invasion forces, two from Britain and one directly from the United States, pretty much on time and pretty much where they were supposed to after just two months’ planning. Having subdued the Vichy French, who sued for terms within four days of the invasion, the plan was to make straight for Tunisia: the British First Army, which included the US II Corps, would drive in from Algeria in the west, while Eighth Army, from the east, sped as quickly as possible across Libya to trap Rommel’s forces in a pincer movement.

      After the success of the TORCH landings and the victory at Alamein, however, the Allies had not found the going in North Africa quite as good as they’d hoped. Northern Tunisia was, in places, further north than Sicily, it was not the flat open desert of Libya, and by late November 1942 winter had arrived and bad weather began to slow down the advance of the British First Army.

      The second spanner in the works was Hitler’s decision to send massive reinforcements to Tunisia. As soon as the Führer heard about the Allied invasion, he ordered the total occupation of France – much of the south had remained unoccupied since the armistice back in June 1940 – and told the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, the German general staff, that a bridgehead was to be created around Tunis. There were those who suggested to Hitler that this wasn’t the best idea, but he was having none of it. He had always been obsessed with the Mediterranean, because of the threat from the Allies striking the soft underbelly of his southern flank, which was why he’d insisted on earlier interventions in North Africa, the Balkans, Greece and Crete.

      Of all the places on the long North African coastline, Tunisia was the closest to Sicily – and Europe – and so the easiest for German troops to reinforce. Hitler hoped to avoid any Italian collapse, and saw the build-up of men and supplies there as the means of keeping the southern flank secure. It was to be held at all costs. The Luftwaffe was sent south once more, as too were panzer divisions, some even equipped with the new giant Panzer Mk VI, better known as the Tiger.

      This build-up of troops had enabled the Axis forces to check the advance of the British and Americans racing to Tunis, while it had taken time for Eighth Army and the RAF to shift themselves 1,200 miles west. In January 1943, Churchill, Roosevelt and the Joint Chiefs of Staff had met at Casablanca for a strategy conference. By this time, Rommel had around 80,000 men in his Panzerarmee Afrika, while General Jürgen von Arnim’s 5. Panzerarmee now amounted to some 65,000 – and growing – in northern Tunisia. Eisenhower actually offered to resign over this setback, but Marshall, Brooke and the chiefs of staff recognized that he was now carrying too much responsibility. Instead, he was made Supreme Allied Commander, which allowed him to concentrate on political and wider operational issues, and a new deputy and overall field commander was brought in under him. This was General Sir Harold Alexander.

      On 21 January, Eighth Army took Tripoli, and while Montgomery waited for the rest of his forces to catch up, Rommel took the opportunity to sweep into southern Tunisia, where he attacked with his old dash and flair on St Valentine’s Day 1943, his panzers smashing into the unprepared and still green US II Corps in what became the ten-day Battle of the Kasserine Pass. The US 1st Armored Division, with losses of some 1,400, was hardest hit, but overall the Allied casualties at Kasserine had been serious rather than disastrous, and the American defeat was not really the catastrophe that is so often depicted – more a short-term tactical gain for the Axis forces than a victory of much strategic value. It had shocked the Americans, none the less; but for troops new to battle, sometimes there is more to be learned from defeat than victory, and that was certainly the case in this instance.

      In any case, the reverse at Kasserine was checked in fairly quick order, leaving Rommel’s Panzerarmee in the south once again overextended and needing urgently to turn back to face Eighth Army’s advance from Libya. In March, the Allies fought back. Eighth Army pushed the Panzerarmee Afrika back at Medenine in southern Tunisia, after which Rommel, now sick and exhausted, left Africa for good, handing over command of his forces, now increasingly made up from Italian units, to Generale Giovanni