World Battlefronts: The First Army

• Share

The burden of offense in Tunisia was hoisted last week on to the shoulders of the British First Army. The Eighth Army, exhausted after two weeks of victory and of eating nothing but glory, cold bully beef, biscuits and tea, rested along 30 miles of a front 150 miles long. The First Army and its attached troops held the rest, and did all of last week's preparatory fighting.

The First Army has none of the veteran arrogance of the mighty Eighth. The First as it now exists is young. It was reorganized, equipped and trained specifically for the North African job. Some of its units are ancient and honorable: such regiments as the Coldstream Guards, the Grenadier Guards, the Lancashire Fusiliers; but in experience as a single machine fighting the enemy, the First is only as old as the Battle of Tunisia.

Blade of Armor. The First began that battle. Lieut. General Kenneth A. N. Anderson and his First Army landed at Algiers on Nov. 9, and they set forth at once for Tunisia. Because they could not know what kind of reception they would get, they were long on offensive weapons, short on transport. Nevertheless they threw "a couple of brigades and a blade of armor" toward Tunis. They traveled in two columns. One reached Mateur, the other Tebourba, 20 and 18 miles from Bizerte and Tunis respectively. By then the advance forces had outrun transport and air support so far that they had no punch left. The bold gamble failed. German counter-attacks drove the forces back, and the First Army settled down to a winter term of schooling in warfare.

One side, then the other, raided and harassed its enemy during the rainy winter months. In February and March, Arnim launched heavy counter-attacks which drove the British (and the Americans farther south) back so that Rommel could crawl into the hills uncrushed. Finally, as the Eighth went to work on the Mareth Line, the First moved forward, this time methodically and to stay. In its present offensives it seems to be a seasoned fighting force which can do its jobs.

Reticent Man. The First's commander, Kenneth Arthur Noel Anderson, is a formal, frugal, unglamorous Scot who has been somewhat eclipsed for the outside public by the brilliant commanders above and around him in Tunisia, and for his own troops by his brilliant juniors within the First Army. He speaks fluent French, and his French subordinates like his Scottish mentality.

The Noel in his name is for his birthday —Christmas, 1891. He was born in India, educated at Charterhouse and Sandhurst, fought and was wounded in World War I, fought in World War II from the Saar to Dunkirk. He has a Scot's reticence which even his wife cannot penetrate.

Wild and Angry Man. Kenneth Anderson has the delicate job of commanding various attached troops, both French and U.S. So far he has won their loyalty.