The February 1943 Battle of the Kasserine Pass marked the first serious confrontation between America's amateur army and Germany's professional Wehrmacht— specifically the elite Afrika Korps— so it should come as no surprise the Allies got beat. But what is surprising is that everybody from General Dwight Eisenhower down to platoon leaders made so many mistakes that defeat was inevitable.
Least guilty of incompetence were the draftees. As war correspondent Ernie Pyle wrote: “There is nothing wrong with the common American soldier.…The deeper he gets into a fight, the more of a fighting man he becomes.” Unfortunately, Maj. Gen. Lloyd Fredendall and his unit commanders stuck the American fighting man so deep into this scrap there was no way out.
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