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US Terminology

In US usage the term "Nth Infantry" or "Nth Armored" refers to a regiment, not a division. So "9th Infantry" would be the 9th Infantry Regiment, not the 9th Infantry Division. This can cause some confusion so I added the term 'Division' where appropriate.

Please sign your comments with four Tildes after your comments.SSG Cornelius Seon (Retired) 23:02, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

North African Campaign

There is no such campaign as the North African Campaign. North Africa was a Sub-Theater of the europe-Africa-Middle East Theater of war in World War II. The Tunisian Campaign was just that. SSG Cornelius Seon (Retired) 23:02, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

May be true from a strict sense in the language you are used to, but I would hate to throw away the North African Campaign article. Perhaps that should be renamed, but I'd like to keep a link. John (Jwy) 23:12, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

I would disagree. We don't always go by official campaign names here (otherwise we'd be in a heap of problems with conflicting terms, overlap, country-specific names etc.). The NAC is certainly a prevelant enough name for the actions that the article describes. Oberiko 23:35, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Correction: North Africa

1935 Hours, 12 April 2006

Corneliusseon is mistaken. Here are the US Army's relevant campaigns.

Egypt-Libya 11 June 1942-12 February 1943
Algeria-French Morocco 8-11 November 1942
Tunisia 17 November 1942-13 May 1943

During the fighting the theater was officially termed the North African Theater of Operations (NATO). It was subordinated to the Mediterranean Theater of Operation (MTO), but never repeat never was a subordinate theater of war to the European Theater of Operations (ETO). After the war, the Army found it more convenient to issue a single campaign ribbon to cover the ETO, MTO, NATO, etc.

Philippsbourg

"Aftermath"

I think the changes just reverted are not questionable - what is the specific issue? John (Jwy) 03:40, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

There being no explanation, I plan to re-insert this information later in the week. Please let me know if I should not (and why not). Let's collaborate here. John (Jwy) 22:21, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Here's what the West Point Military History Series: Europe and the Mediterranian. has to say in support of the (currently removed) edit:

1. "American armor was employed piecemeal, not in mass..."

2. "The II Corps commander....had proved to be indecisive in crisis."

3. "Initial dispositions had been too dispersed, thereby sacrificing an entire RCT."

4. "The Army Air Force had been ineffectively coordinated."

5. "Units had been haphazardly mixed."

6. "Patton had assumed command of the II Corps after Kasserine, and had immediately begun to rebuild its confidence and strength."

7. "Patton turned the II Corps over to...Bradley".

And here is Johnathan House in Combined Arms Warfare in the Twentieth Century:

1. "...a variety of factors, including inexperience, led American commanders to scatter their forces in regimental or smaller units, thereby depriving them of the advantages of the U.S. centralized fire-control system."

2. "In the crisis of Kasserine Pass, however, the artillery of the 1st and 9th Infantry Divisions was finally able to operate on an organized basis, with devastating effects on the Germans."

3. "Similar problems arose in the Southwest Pacific, where the ...32nd Division learned at great cost the need to coordinate artillery and air support with the infantry."

4. "Six months before the Normandy invasion, for example, thirty-three U.S. Divisions in England had experienced no joint air-ground training..."

5. "In 1943 the AAF changed the radios in fighter-bombers to a frequency that was incompatible with ground radios."

6. "In short, air and ground units went overseas with little understanding of the tactics and capabilites of their counterparts."

7. "...by early 1944 the British and Americans had improvised a close air support system."

This backs up much of the original edit. The Fredendall quotes were correct also. DMorpheus 01:19, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

On Fredendall, here is Army magazine from March 2003:

1. "He was not a man who worked easily with others, either senior or junior to him."

2. "After several visits, Maj. Gen. Lucian Truscott, Deputy Chief of Staff and Eisenhower's personal representative in Tunisia, painted an unflattering portrait: Small in stature, loud and rough in speech, he was outspoken in his opinions and critical of superiors and subordinates alike. He was inclined to jump to conclusions which were not always well founded. He rarely left his command post for personal visits and reconnaissance, yet he was impatient with the recommendations of subordinates more familiar with the terrain and other conditions than he.

3. "His outspoken antipathy for our allies, especially the British, was more than reciprocated. Anderson, his immediate superior, thought him incompetent."

4. "In a coalition command where allied cooperation was viewed as crucial to victory, Fredendall's open antagonism to the British was a serious management problem for Eisenhower. "

5. "Complicating his command relationships was his habit of speaking in a kind of shorthand slang, giving rise to confusion about what he actually meant. This sloppiness of speech and use of obscure, barely decipherable phrases occasionally caused serious problems, especially when he was issuing orders during battle."

6. "He had an openly hostile relationship with Maj. Gen. Orlando Ward, commanding general, 1st Armored Division, described by Truscott as "an antipathy most unusual." Ward was a quiet, intelligent, decorated combat veteran of World War I, respected throughout the Army. "

7. "The other division commanders, Maj. Gen. Terry Alien of the 1st Infantry, Maj. Gen. Charles (Doc) Ryder of the 34th, and Maj. Gen. Troy Middleton of the 9th, as well as many staff members, were also dissatisfied with Fredendall's leadership. Lt. Col. Hamilton Howze, Ward's operations officer (G-3) and later a four-star general, developed "such a detestation for Fredendall that it was hard to control, simply because of the way he treated Gen. Ward.""

8. "...his disposition of forces appeared piecemeal and sloppy. "

9. "Ike was especially shocked by the dug-in, well-fortified and inaccessible command post (CP) so far from the front -more than 70 miles-and Fredendall's unwillingness to leave it for front-line visits. Located deep in a ravine that was accessible by a narrow road constructed by II Corps engineers, Speedy Valley as it was called, took three weeks to build and absorbed the efforts of a full company of men working day and night blasting elaborate shelters for the headquarters. It was, in Omar Bradley's words, "an embarrassment to every American soldier" and was contemptuouslytuously referred to as "Lloyd's very last resort" and "Shangri-la, a million miles from nowhere."" (Note: my edit had wrongly said an engineer battalion was committed to this effort. My bad.)

10. "The troop dispositions were disappointing, with infantry, tank and artillery units intermixed and based on widely separated hills unable to support each other. It was exactly the "penny packet" formations that had led to British defeats in the early phase of the Desert War. Eisenhower's original idea was to maintain the 1st Armored as a fully massed and mobile reaction force able to intervene decisively wherever needed. Now it was scattered all over the field. Even more troubling, Ike learned that Fredendall had never visited the front and that the deployments were based on maps hanging in his underground headquarters."

11. "Eisenhower: "What do you think of the command here?" Bradley: "It's pretty bad. I've talked to all the division commanders. To a man they've lost confidence in Fredendall as the corps commander."" March 5 1943 at II Corps HQ.

Eisenhower then relieved Frednedall. On Mar 6 Patton took command.

12. "The institutional politics that kept him in a position for which he was totally unsuited-long after it was painfully obvious-were never openly subjected to examination or criticism. " DMorpheus 01:46, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

2140 Hours 13 April, 2006

It looks like you have done your homework, but I question why you left out the most significant observation made about the subject on page 175 of The West Point Military History Series: Europe and the Mediterranian. I have no objection to the material in question being restored, although I reserve the possiblity that it might require some minor editing.

Now that we have this out of the way, it would be very nice if you would go to the Sherman page and restore, not revert, the material you reverted previously. (Remember, I provided the sources you requested.)

Philippsbourg

Thank you, Philippsbourg. If I had known it was citations you were looking for, I could have done the same. John (Jwy) 05:45, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Well call me puzzled. Phillipsbourg already had this reference and now has no problem with the edit he reverted. Why then was it ever reverted if he knew it was a valid edit? Why was the edit labeled "questionable"?

P.S. The after-action reports from 1st Armored Div, as well as Harmon's report on "Lessons Learned" lend further support and additional detail to the original edit. DMorpheus 13:50, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

1010 Hours 13 April 2006

YOUR ANSWER

It would be very nice if you would go to the Sherman page and restore, not revert, the material you reverted previously. (Remember, I provided the sources you requested.) You made a mistake, and you should correct it.

Philippsbourg

I don't know the details, but would suggest that it might be more of a disagreement over appropriate content than a "mistake." In any event, the information you entered is available by selecting the appropriate entry on the history tab of the page in question. I encourage you to recover what you think appropriate, just as we will "recover" what information we can from the history here. John (Jwy) 18:05, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

I am puzzled as well, but at this point it is a moot point (or will be when we properly incorporate the changes). I would be interested in the answer, but let's let this one go and deal any issues that might come up in the future. John (Jwy) 14:43, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Commander reorganization

Who did the reorganization of the commanders? Eisenhower, Alexander ?GraemeLeggett 09:04, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

The relief of Fredendall was Eisenhower's decision. The appointment of Alexander was a decision that had been made earlier at Casablanca. Source is the West Point Military History Series: Europe and the Mediterranian. DMorpheus 00:56, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

USACMH AME THEATER MAP

I added the USACMH's map of the Africa, Mdit, European Theater SSG Cornelius Seon (Retired) 04:08, 11 April 2006 (UTC)