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  • Please see the most recent updates in the "Where did the .com name go?" thread. Posts number 16 and 17.

    Post 16 Update

    Post 17 Warning

OT *** Kasserine *** OT

PRB

PRB

Administrator
Staff member
Reading a book called An Army at Dawn, about the war in North Africa. Ground combat has always been a confusing jumble divisions, regiments, companies, platoons, and God knows what else, to me. I can't seem to follow it too well. I knew the battle at Kasserine Pass was a defeat for the allies, but I had no idea how bad the allied situation really was in Africa, from TORCH to this ill fated disaster. In every way possible, training, readiness, leadership, tactics, organization, the allied armies in Africa were a mess. And worse, we didn't even know how bad we were. We thought we were the baddest army in the land. Until we ran into these guys named Rommel and Kesselring, that is... Kasserine, evidently, was (finally) a wake up call. So I fired up Plan-G and took my 109 out for an air tour of the infamous land mark in Tunisia.
 
Good books. Our troops were the badasses! They just had complete boneheaded leadership. Just about everything during Torch was a failure of leadership. You think North Africa was bad try reading about the Italian campaign. Normandy......I won't get into it. That's what you get when you don't let the Marine Corps in on the fight! :engel016:
 
Hey MudMarine. Howd ya make out at Guadacanal & Iwo Jima. Talk about learning lessons.
 
AFAIK the US Army made every rookie mistake on the book and made new ones. They were licked thoroughly by the afrika korps. The best thing that came out of this was that the shake down eliminated a lot of old fashioned officers that were cashiered.

The results were startling afterwards.
 
Yes the Americans were new to combat. The Germans had 3 years combat experience by the time Torch started. The US Marines were busy in the Pacific. Everyone was learning.
 
jim said:
Hey MudMarine. Howd ya make out at Guadacanal & Iwo Jima. Talk about learning lessons.
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We kicked ass then let the army clean up. Bad examples, we didn't run from either fight like the army at Kasserine pass. The lesson we learned at the Canal was don't trust the Navy. We didn't learn anything new at Iwo. Peleliu already taught us about a dug in enemy. Lets talk about Okinawa, how'd the army do there.
 
Without the interference of any US Marine, Rommel lost the desert war after all, mostly due to the lack of resources. So German store men were at least as efficient as the US marines.....

I did the same as Paul did, I took my desert Focke Wulf out of the hangar and went there to explore the area. I couldn't find much which was worth to fight for.....

Cheers,
Huub

Kasserine_2.jpg


Kasserine_1.jpg
 
My Uncle Gordon had a 6X6 shot out from under him and collected two Purple Hearts during the Kasserine Pass fiasco.
As far as MudMarines efforts were concerned, he was riding around in his old man's jock strap when Kasserine happened.
 
Helldiver said:
My Uncle Gordon had a 6X6 shot out from under him and collected two Purple Hearts during the Kasserine Pass fiasco.
As far as MudMarines efforts were concerned, he was riding around in his old man's jock strap when Kasserine happened.
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You couldn't hold my "old mans" jock strap, oldman!:icon_lol:
 
Although we will never know, but even if the US marines would have won this battle, the Air Force was needed to end the war. And that's a proven fact!

Cheers,
Huub
(ex Air Force ;) )
 
huub vink said:
Although we will never know, but even if the US marines would have won this battle, the Air Force was needed to end the war. And that's a proven fact!

Cheers,
Huub
(ex Air Force ;) )
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I agree 100% Huub!

Did you know the US Marine Corps has it's own airwing? With men like Pappy Boyington and Joe Foss, amoungst others, we did pretty well against our opponents in the PTO. The Marines did serve in the ETO. Mostly on board ship at gun stations along side our wonderful navy.

Just so everyone knows or cares my comment was more of a joke aimed at PRB, a tease. My other over looked comment was intended to point out an obvious fact. The our leadership during the first part of the war was poor. Our brave troops deserved better. But you shouldn't care about my opinion because I was still riding around in a jock strap. So I'm not worthy to speak on the subject!:icon_lol:
 
Sorry mud but your marines were still inexperienced rookies at this point and would have also had there asses handed to them. It was a real baptism of fire for the US forces and a real wake up call for many.

Besides you all know its the SAS wondering randomly onto Luftwaffe airfields miles behind enemy lines and then just riding up and down vickers machine guns glowing red with the amount of fire being poured out that really kicked but, yes sir, The SAS and LRDG were the real hard nuts of that particular area of conflict.
 
Well, even these units of the US Army, by the end of the battle, sort of got it's you-know-what in one sock, and started giving a reasonable account of itself.

This book has some funny moments. General Patton - what a character. He was on the bridge of the USS Augusta during the TORCH landings, and while that ship and others got into a pretty serious food fight with some French shore batteries. He watched as the Augusta and other ships "chased salvos" and returned fire for some time, then commented, in typical Patton style "pfft, this doesn't look so dangerous." :icon_lol:
 
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