An Army at Dawn: Big Red One
Publisher’s Preview
By Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
June 2024

The real trouble with the Americans is that the soldiers won’t fight. They haven’t got the light of battle in their eyes.
British General Sir Bernard Law Montgomery

For the new Playbook Edition of Panzer Grenadier: An Army at Dawn, designer Mike Perryman re-focused the game’s scenarios very tightly on the evolution of the U.S. Army’s 1st Armored Division as a modern, combined-arms mechanized fighting force. It already trended that way, and now it has some more scenarios featuring Old Ironsides and follows our story-arc format.

Even in its first edition, An Army at Dawn didn’t give much love to the 1st Infantry Division, at least not as a headliner, and now Mike has remedied that oversight with An Army at Dawn: Big Red One. It’s a Campaign Study, what we call our small books of history and scenarios, usually intensely focused on a single topic. Big Red One has eleven new scenarios, broken into three chapters, all focused on the 1st Infantry Division.

The 1st Infantry Division landed in North Africa in early November as part of the first wave of Operation Torch, hitting the beaches around Oran in western Algeria. The Axis responded by pouring troops into Tunisia, and the Allies marched eastwards to confront them. The 1st Infantry Division would be part of the American contribution, II Corps.

Lloyd Fredendall, commanding II Corps, operated his divisions in task forces cobbled together from several different commands. And while this may seem a very modern way of doing things (it became official U.S. Army doctrine in the ROAD Division concept of the 1960’s), flexibility and task-orientation were not Fredendall’s goal. Rather, he looked to create ad hoc formations that he could move about on his own situation maps, thereby bypassing the division commanders (chiefly Terry de la Mesa Allen of 1st Infantry Division and Orlando Ward of 1st Armored Division) and avoiding directives from his superiors (who may not have even been aware that the various task forces existed).

And so, 1st Infantry Division sub-units do see action in An Army at Dawn, a good deal of action. They just do so in task forces combined with 1st Armored Division sub-units. And you don’t see “1st Infantry Division” in the scenario unit listings.

Dwight Eisenhower, the theater commander, proved stubbornly reluctant to fire Fredendall, despite strident demands from every front-line American general, the British and the French. “Is this a private war?” Allen demanded of Eisenhower, as he and his staff sat idled by Fredendall’s meddling. “Or can anyone get in?”

Only the supreme ass-kicking delivered to the Americans at Kasserine Pass in February 1943 finally cost Fredendall his job, though even then it happened with all the gentleness that Ike could muster. Eisenhower told Fredendall’s replacement, George S. Patton, to operate his divisions as intended under U.S. Army doctrine and organization, which Patton proceeded to do.

Allen (center), assistant division commander Theodore Roosevelt Jr. (left) and corps commander Patton (right). El Guettar, March 1943.

That’s where Big Red One picks up the action, with Fredendall banished to Memphis to give away brides at military weddings and Terry Allen finally commanding 1st Infantry Division in combat. There are 11 new scenarios, all of them drawn from actions that took place in March and April 1943, at the behest of Patton and Patton’s successor (and Allen nemesis), Omar Bradley. And all of them conducted by 1st Infantry Division regiments under their own division command.

Allen had trained his division hard during the few weeks he had between assuming command from a placeholder and embarking for Algeria. Allen’s methods emphasized tactical exercises, care and feeding of weapons, and physical fitness. They did not give much notice to the formalities, like saluting or protocol; even newspaper reporters called Allen “Terry.” This earned Allen the enmity of Bradley and of Eisenhower’s chief of staff, Walter Bedell Smith, and would cost him his command during the campaign in Sicily.

It takes a while, in terms of our story, for 1st Infantry Division to show its full capabilities; the disorder brought on by Fredendall’s snoopervision did not immediately dissipate. But as Allen took full control of his formation, his regiments and battalions became more and more combat-oriented. By the end of our story, 1st Infantry Division is (in Panzer Grenadier terms) wielding better initiative, morale, and leadership than its German and Italian opponents. And these are the essence of Panzer Grenadier.

In the first chapter (Chapter Eleven, as we continue chapter and scenario numbering from An Army at Dawn), 1st Infantry Division is battling Italian and German armored units east of the El Guettar oasis. The enemies are veteran formations, while the Americans are still recovering from the Fredendall Experience. It’s tough going for the Big Red One.

The second chapter (Chapter Twelve) is the big one, with five scenarios showing 1st Infantry Division is on the attack on the Djebel el Mcheltat in the last days of March, trying to seize important high ground so that an armored task force from 1st Armored Division can exploit down the road to Gabes on the Mediterranean coast and split the Axis defenders of Tunisia in half. They did eventually claw their way up the rugged hillsides, but not until the Axis positions elsewhere had already collapsed and Gabes lost its strategic importance.

By the third chapter (Chapter Thirteen), these are not the same Americans that British soldiers branded “Our Italians.” The Axis have been pushed back into a small bridgehead around Tunis and Bizerte in north-eastern Tunisia, but that of course also greatly shortens the line they need to hold. First Infantry Division squares off with the German 334th Infantry Division. The American division is now a first-rate fighting unit; the German one, not so much. This battle, for Hill 609, would mark the first clear-cut victory by American troops fighting against the European Axis, and makes a fitting conclusion for our story.

Big Red One is not, despite its title, a very big book. But it is a deep and intense one, with a tightly-focused story and a great scenario set that carries on the story from An Army at Dawn by focusing on one of the U.S. Army’s foremost divisions. You will like it.

You can order Big Red One right here.

Big Red Package
      An Army at Dawn
      Big Red One
Retail Price: $92.98
Package Price: $85
Gold Club Price: $68
You can order the Big Red Package right here.

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Mike Bennighof is president of Avalanche Press and holds a doctorate in history from Emory University. A Fulbright Scholar and NASA Journalist in Space finalist, he has published a great many books, games and articles on historical subjects; people are saying that some of them are actually good. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama with his wife, three children, and new puppy. He misses his lizard-hunting Iron Dog, Leopold.

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