Harry Yeide - Tank Killers

Both Task Forces Red and Green entered Oran on 10 November, seized the city center, and linked up with elements of the 1st Infantry Division as it pushed in from the other direction. After suffering constant French small arms fire on the way into the city, the tank killers were surprised to be met in the streets by clapping civilians. 24Recon Company, 601st Tank Destroyer Battalion, followed the Big Red One into the city but saw no real fighting. 25The men would later suggest off the record that they had probably accidentally expended most of their ammunition shooting at each other as they nervously ducked into and out of hallways hunting for French snipers. 26

The French commander of the Oran area surrendered to BrigGen Lunsford Oliver, commanding general of Combat Command B. 27

That night, Captain Paulick’s reconnaissance troops from the 601st slept on the sidewalks of Oran. The city was dilapidated and down-at-the-heels in November 1942: “Trolley tracks, the odor of automobiles burning alcohol, wine doped with a sort of hashish, chic French women and slovenly dressed men, dirty Arabs and dirty streets,” recalled a history of the 1st Infantry Division. 28Even after six weeks of occupation the Center Task Force special service officer would note, “The only forms of amusement for men in Oran on pass are movies in French at the civilian theaters and the cheap French bars.” 29Paulick’s men were awakened by the whack of oranges the natives were dropping out of windows by way of welcome. “Hi-Ho, Silver!” was the first password, and within a day, it seemed that every Arab street urchin was shouting, “Hi-Ho, Silver! Away! Bon-bon! Cigarette! Choo-gum!” “Chief” Gomez, Recon’s first sergeant, thought the password undignified and was almost shot when he refused to respond “Away!” when challenged by a sentry. 30

With the fall of Oran, the campaign in Algeria ended. The tank killers had “seen the elephant,” as the British called the first experience of combat. Lieutenant Colonel Waters obtained a captaincy for Whitsit in recognition of his performance, although with most of the battalion still in England, Bob Whitsit remained a platoon commander. Waters cautioned his men, however, “We did very well against the scrub team. Next week we hit the Germans. Do not slack off in anything. When we make a showing against them, you may congratulate yourselves.” 31He was not alone in his view. Patton told observers from Washington that had the landings been opposed by Germans, “we never would have gotten ashore.” 32

On 11 November, the 701st Tank Destroyer Battalion and elements of Combat Command B were detached and ordered to proceed to Tunisia to join the British First Army. The tank killers of Company C were among the first to move. They arrived in the vicinity of Medjez el Bab by 24 November, at which time the command was attached to the Blade Force, British 78th Infantry Division. 33

Several days later, the rest of the 601st Tank Destroyer Battalion (except for Company B, which was delivered to Algiers by mistake) joined Recon Company at Oran under the watchful eye of LtCol Hershel Baker. The two-hundred pound, roly-poly CO had a cherubic face, but he spoke with a foghorn voice and was a ball of fire. The World War I veteran had scheduled a beer party for the entire battalion the day he took command in December 1941. He had a taste for booze and gambling, and he was both a showman and something of a martinet with his officers. But Baker was “proud as hell” of his outfit. 34

The battalion bivouacked at St. Lucien, where the men had their first taste of the exotic: “prowling, vino -peddling, cigarette-buying natives and howling native dogs,” according to the outfit’s unofficial history. The local gendarmerie also demonstrated its quaint custom of encouraging people to move along with a touch of a whip. Baker threw a big party for his old friends, MajGen Terry de la Mesa Allen and BrigGen Theodore Roosevelt Jr., commanding general of the 1st Infantry Division and his deputy, respectively. 35

Major General Orlando Ward, 1st Armored Division’s commanding general, described Tunisia in a letter to Armored Force chief LtGen Jacob Devers. “First, the country is bigger than anyone can imagine—great wide expanses of plains and jagged, rugged mountains, and in many cases up-turned rocks standing up in the middle of the plains. Many of the hills and plains are tank-proof, although some are rolling and smooth, over which tanks can pass without difficulty. Dry wadies cut the plains, which are dotted with Arab huts and adobe houses. There are a good many trees on the mountains but few elsewhere.” 36

German combat aircraft and a handful of troops began landing at an airfield near Tunis on 9 November, the first of fifteen thousand reinforcements—including one hundred tanks—that arrived by the end of the month. Nine thousand Italian troops also moved in, most having shifted west from Tripoli. British forces, meanwhile, advanced from Algiers by land and short seaborne and airborne hops. Thanks in part to the Axis incursion, the Allies persuaded the French in North Africa to join their cause as combatants on 13 November. On 17 November, a German parachute battalion encountered French holding forces and the British spearhead at Medjez el Bab. The bold German commander bluffed the Allied forces into pulling back. 37

Medjez el Bab lay only ten minutes flying time from the hard-surfaced German airfields around Tunis. Allied reinforcements, supplies, and air support had to make a three hundred fifty-mile journey to the new front. Allied fighters could loiter only ten minutes over the battlefield and operated off dirt airstrips, which any rain quickly turned to muck. 38And starting in late November, there were downpours aplenty in Algeria and Tunisia as unseasonable wet weather preceded the expected rainy season by two months.

For Combat Command B and the elements of the 701st Tank Destroyer Battalion, the trek was even farther to Medjez el Bab: seven hundred miles from Oran. Departing on 16 November, Companies B and C of the 701st arrived the following day in Algiers where, much to their surprise, the company COs were greeted by Eisenhower. The Allied commander explained to Capt Frank Redding and Capt Gilbert Ellmann—commanding Companies B and C, respectively—that he had wanted to meet the first American troops sent to the Tunisian sector. The next morning, the company commanders met with British LtGen Kenneth Anderson, commander of the British forces pushing toward Tunis. Anderson told them that transportation bottlenecks were dramatically slowing the deployment of tank units to the front, while the tank destroyers were light enough to make the journey on their own. The pressing need for additional forces was why such high-level officers were so personally interested in the activities of two humble companies. 39

Companies B and C of the 701st traveled together over curved mountain roads as far as Souk Aras, where Company B turned aside for Tebessa on 21 November.

Company C continued to Souk el Arba and arrived mid-afternoon on 22 November. The men received a warm welcome from the Luftwaffe: Twelve Me-109 fighter-bombers and six Ju-87 Stuka dive-bombers bombed and strafed the company assembly area, as well as the headquarters of the British 78th Infantry Division and a nearby airfield. Six Me-109s attacked again forty-five minutes later as the company drove to its bivouac at Bulla Regia. The company lost one halftrack. 40