Word: fondouk
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Correspondents who saw the British 6th Armored Division break through at Fondouk two weeks later felt that the U.S. armor might have shown more daring at El Guettar. True, the hills to the south of the pass had not been cleared, but a determined thrust might have forced the pass and flanked the enemy in those hills. True, there were minefields in the pass, but so there were at Fondouk, and there the British sacrificed some 40 tanks to plough through. But whatever shortcomings were revealed at El Guettar, they taught some valuable lessons. If U.S. troops learn best...
...Fondouk was a lesson to the 34th Division. The task at Fondouk, 90 miles north of El Guettar, was much the same as it had been in the south: to clear the mountains guarding a pass, force the pass and spread out on the plain to Kairouan. Those who watched a brigade of Guards take the dominant hill north of Fondouk in half an hour, who later saw the British armor plunge through a 450-yard-deep minefield covered by twelve anti-tank guns and speed for Kairouan, felt that there was something essentially wrong with the 34th, which...
...hill to the north of the pass, which dominated the 34th's objective, was still in enemy hands. U.S. infantry works better in enveloping tactics. If the hill to the north had been taken first, and then the southern hills attacked from either flank, the story of Fondouk might have been written differently...
...better yet was the way the Americans fought when they got there. They had no Dunkirk to avenge, but they did have a Faïd, an El Guettar, and a Fondouk. A correspondent who had written of their deficiencies on those earlier battlefields wrote now: "Experienced units of the II Corps look equal to the best British forces...
...thing the U.S. troops were learning was a healthy respect for the British. Said one American who watched the action at Fondouk: "I wish that those American strategists who beef about the British in the Stork Club could have breathed the dust of this valley today...