The First Army

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.

Perhaps the most colorful of his charges are the Goumiers. These are Berber warriors from the Atlas Mountains, who take their name from their unit, roughly equivalent to the company, called Goum. Each Goum has a French captain, two or three French lieutenants, about 15 French sergeants. Goumiers are tall and well built, with square foreheads and dark faces. They are expert woodsmen, live in the mountains and can fight there as if fighting were everyday existence. Their standard weapon is a French rifle of a design that was old at the time of the Boer War. Last week they were supplied with a few tommy guns. When they went into action they fired their new toys with screams of delight.

General Anderson also commands the II Corps of U.S. troops. Most of them were last week engaged in mopping up behind the advance, in garrisoning towns, and in gathering north of Kairouan for future action. They had had their bad moments, but they were blooded now (see p. 15).

Potential Army. The First Army's record has so far been: one bold failure, a few bitter but minor setbacks, one efficient but limited thrust forward. If the setbacks, including those suffered by the Americans, have in any degree been Anderson's fault, the successes in the same degree have been to his credit.

His Army is so far potential. It is certainly eager to convert its potentialities into success. Wrote TIME Correspondent Charles Wertenbaker last week of some men of the First: "I remember one sergeant who stopped at our car for an instant and all he could say was: 'We're frightfully keen for it. . . .' The tanks were bursting out of a pine grove on to the road, where they churned up huge billows of dust, then charging down the road toward battle stations. The officers in the turrets were waving and shouting as if they were off to a steeplechase. The major I was with kept calling to them by name and saying, 'My God, they look bloody good, don't they?' And my God, they did."

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