US Major General Lloyd Fredendall had never seen Sidi bou Zid, the patch of North African desert where his forces were about to clash with those of German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel on February 14, 1943. Fredendall was 80 miles away, plotting his battle tactics on a map. If he had been on the scene, he might have realized that the hills on which he was perching his infantry regiments were too far apart for those units to support each other or the tanks on the flat ground below them. Rommel realized it, though. In the impending clash at Sidi bou Zid and in the ensuing larger fight five days later at Kasserine Pass, he would make no mistake in demonstrating to Fredendall why he was known as the Desert Fox.
Years before these forces met—indeed, years before Germany declared war on the United States—the outcome of the battles at Sidi bou Zid and Kasserine Pass had already been determined. Since the end of World War I, the United States had turned its back on its armed forces, particularly the army. While Germany developed state-of-the-art tanks and theory for using them in battle, the US Army did next to nothing of the sort. Americans by and large were in no frame of mind to have their tax money spent on the military when they had no intention of fighting a European war ever again.
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