On the morning in February the big German push started against the American troops in Tunisia, our forward command post in that area was hidden in a patch of cactus about a mile from the town of Sidi bou Zid. [. . .]

A command post is really the headquarters of a unit.  In this case a brigadier general was in command.  His staff included Intelligence and S3 (planning) officers, unit commanders, a medical detachment, kitchens, and various odds and ends.

A command post of that size has several score vehicles and two or three hundred men.  Its work is all done in trucks, half-tracks or tents.  It was always prepared to move, when at the front.  And it does move every few days, so the enemy won’t spot it.  This special command post was about ten miles back from the nearest known enemy position.  Our artillery and infantry and some tanks were between it and the enemy.

That Sunday morning hordes of German tanks and troops came swarming out from behind the mountains around Faid Pass.  We didn’t know so many tanks were back there, and we didn’t know so many Germans were either, for our patrols had been bringing in mostly Italian prisoners from their raids.

The attack was so sudden nobody could believe it was in full forec.  Our forward troops were overrun before they knew what was happening.  The command post itself didn’t start moving till after lunch.  By then it was too late—or almost too late.

Command cars, half-tracks and jeeps started west across the fields of semicultivated desert, for by then the good road to the north was already cut off.  The column had moved about eight miles when German tanks came charging in on the helpless vehicles from both sides.

A headquarters command post is not heavily armed.  It has little with which to fight back.  All those men and cars could do was duck and dodge and run like hell.  There was no such thing as a fighting line.  Everything was mixed up over an area of ten miles or more.  It was a complete melee.  Every jeep was on its own.  The accompanying tanks fought till knocked out, and their crews then got out and moved along on foot.  One tank commander, whose whole crew escaped after the tank caught fire, said that at least the Germans didn’t machine-gun them when they jumbed from the burning tank.

[. . .]

The Germans just overran our troops that afternoon.  They used tanks, artillery, infantry, and planes dave-bombing our troops continuously.  Our artillery was run over in the first rush.  We were swamped, scattered, consumed, by the German surprise.

Twilight found our men and machines straggling over an area extending some ten miles back of Sidi bou Zid.  Darkness saved those who were saved.  During the night the command post assembled what was left of itself in another cactus patch about fifteen behind its first position.  Throughout the night, and for days afterward, tired men came straggling in afoot from the desert.

That night the Germans withdrew from the area they’d taken, and the next morning we sent trucks back to bury the dead and tow out what damaged vehicles they could.  But by next afternoon the battle was on again.