An Army at Dawn
Scenario Preview, Part Five
By Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
July 2024

One rulebook to rule them all.

That’s my vision for the Panzer Grenadier series, that you can learn to play the game one time, and open a world of thousands of scenarios and tens of thousands of hours of fun. It’s not a difficult game to learn, it plays pretty intuitively, and it covers every type of tactical combat in the Second World War. You should be playing your games, not puzzling over the rules.

Panzer Grenadier: An Army at Dawn takes the series to Tunisia in late 1942 and early 1943 (with a little bit of fighting in Algeria, too). It’s pretty forbidding terrain: desert and rocks and lots of hills. The U.S. Army isn’t very good, at least not yet; the Germans have combat experience on their side but they are at the end of a very long logistical tether.

Let’s have a look at the sixth chapter and its four scenarios:

Chapter Six
A Rough Start
Hampered by corps commander Lloyd Fredendall’s sheer incompetence (not least of which, his refusal to allow the division to deploy as a complete formation), and inadequate materiel, the U.S. First Armored Division had nonetheless steadily improved its performance since reaching the front in Tunisia.

That experience only extended to one-third of the division’s combat elements, as Fredendall held back the rest of the division. And while Fredendall takes the lion’s share of the blame in most popular histories (and deserves it, in most cases), he wasn’t the only senior general sticking his fingers into the pie.

Part of the problem appears to have lain in the sheer size and combat power of 1st Armored Division. Each of its combat commands wielded significantly more than an entire German panzer division, even at paper strength. And the American division received a steady flow of replacement and repaired vehicles to keep it up to strength, where the German divisions did not. That made it very tempting for not just Fredendall, but Kenneth Anderson of the British First Army and theater commander Dwight Eisenhower, to operate the combat commands as though they were independent divisions on their own.

Eventually, the rest of Old Ironsides would see action.

Scenario Sixteen
The Sened Raid
24 January 1943
While Combat Command B fought on the northern segment of the front with mixed success, II Corps commander Lloyd Fredendall held back the remainder of the 1st Armored Division. The division’s commander, Orlando Ward, drew up a plan for them to secure one of the key passes through the Eastern Dorsal at Maknassy. II Corps commander Lloyd Fredendall overruled him, changing the plan to just raiding Sened Station twenty-eight miles away, using “Combat Command C,” a scratch force drawing from all of the division’s combat elements.

Conclusion
The successful raid elated Fredendall, who called his superiors, exclaiming “Trump that if you can.” Successful it may have been, but the blowhard corps commander micromanaged the 1st Armored Division throughout this period, often bypassing its commander, Orlando Ward. These flaws accumulated over time and eventually cost both men their commands; Ward would command the 20th Armored Division late in the war while Fredendall received a promotion and command of the Second Army headquarters in Memphis, Tennessee, where he attended weddings and gave away brides. But for now, the raid captured the Germans’ attention and highlighted the vulnerability of Maknassy. They quickly responded just as Orlando Ward had predicted.

Notes
The Americans hope to roll past the Italian defenses and blow up a large supply depot, then roll on again. The Italians are outnumbered with less-than-enthusiastic morale equal to that of the Americans except for a handful of tough Bersaglieri. But they do have an 88mm gun that will shred the American Stuart tanks (all of their armored support) if even the chance.

Scenario Seventeen
Task Force Kern
31 January 1943
On the 30th, the Germans occupied the southern passes through the Eastern Dorsals, completely reversing the strategic situation there. They would require few troops to guard the passes, allowing their spearhead elements to turn their attention elsewhere. Not waiting for his superiors to muck things up, Combat Command A’s Brig. Gen. Raymond McQuillin dispatched Lt. Col. William B. Kern with a hastily-assembled task force to clear the Ain Rebaou Pass while Col. Alexander Stark of 1st Infantry Division secured the Faid Pass about five miles to the north.

Conclusion
Lloyd Fredendall at II Corps routinely usurped 1st Armored Division’s commander, Orlando Ward, along with Terry de la Mesa Allen at 1st Armored Division, issuing orders directly to their subordinate units. At 0300 Ward and theater commander Dwight Eisenhower’s official observer, Lucian K. Truscott, climbed Djebel Lessouda to watch the action (both this battle and the action on which the following scenario is based were visible from this vantage point). The attacking force looked puny in the vast panorama before them. The force proved insufficient to the task, and soon Ward returned to his headquarters to reorganize for a stronger effort. Despite heated rants from Ward, Allen and McQuillin regarding Fredendall’s rank incompetence, delivered through Truscott, Eisenhower would send out still more “observers” and dither for another month before reluctantly firing the II Corps commander.

Notes
The American force isn’t so puny in the scenario; at least it outnumbers the Germans, though only slightly. American morale is once again not as good as that of the Germans, and if the Americans want to win, they’ll have to fight their way through the German defenders, a well-balanced force of tanks and infantry with support weapons.

Scenario Eighteen
Task Force Stark
31 January 1943
Rather than deploy one of its actual maneuver formations, II Corps cobbled together a task force from 1st Infantry and 1st Armored Divisions, led by Col. Alexander Stark of the 26th Infantry Regiment. When the French XIX Corps ordered Combat Command A to attack Faid Pass, most of the command’s combat elements had been detached and Stark, with contradictory orders from XIX and II Corps, ended up delaying the attack until a day later.

Conclusion
Fredendall continued to work his magic; he circumvented the attachment of Combat Command A to French command by creating Task Force Stark. Stark, an infantry officer, had fought heroically in the trenches of the First World War but had no experience with tanks and sent his Shermans straight ahead into the rising sun. Within ten minutes half of them had been turned into blazing wrecks, while his infantry methodically advanced to within a mile of the pass and then worked their way northward in an effort to outflank it. After taking two ridges the advance stalled under heavy enemy fire. After dark the Americans retired to friendly lines. Now Edouard Welvert of the French Constantine Division and Henri Giraud, commanding French forces in North Africa, joined the chorus begging Eisenhower to fire Fredendall. But Ike still backed his corps commander.

Notes
The American task here is pretty tough: they have a steep list of victory conditions, and only a slight edge in combat power with lower morale than the Germans and only a little more artillery. There’s not much air support, and what there is of it flies for the Luftwaffe. Without strong play and a little luck, the American player could find himself or herself exiled to Memphis with Fredendall.

Scenario Nineteen
Renewed Effort
1 February 1943
While Fredendall remained obsessed with the capture of Maknassy, McQuillin of Combat Command A put together a plan for a renewed attack on Faid Pass by Task Force Stark. This time, the American infantry would advance on foot, behind a heavy artillery barrage – a tactic more suited to their training, and to their commander, Col. Alexander Stark. McQuillin also moved the start time to noon, so that the rising sun would not be in the Americans’ eyes.

Conclusion
The Americans demonstrated some understanding of the subtleties of war. Instead of attacking with the rising sun in their eyes, as on the previous day, they waited until noon. Recognizing that armor was for all practical purposes restricted to the pass floor, another battalion of infantry joined the attack instead. The men maneuvered into the hills where needed without losing as much combat capability. This was all basic stuff but the inexperienced American officers needed to learn it - often the hard way. Still rank amateurs compared to the Germans, the Americans were already ascending the learning curve.

Notes
As noted, the Americans come with more infantry support this time, and a pretty strong contingent of tanks as well. This time they have a serious edge in numbers if not in artillery, and their morale remains weaker than that of the Germans. Their bar for victory is set kind of high, but this time they just might have the forces to achieve it.

And that’s it for Chapter Six. Next time, we dive into Chapter Seven.

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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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