Scenes from the Battle of Kasserine Pass in February 1943

The Battle of Kasserine Pass took place from 18-24 February 1943 at Kasserine Pass, a 2-mile-wide gap in the Grand Dorsal chain of the Atlas Mountains in west central Tunisia. It was a part of the Tunisian campaign of World War II. The Axis forces, led by Generalfeldmarschall Erwin Rommel, were primarily from the Afrika Korps Assault Group, the Italian Centauro Armored Division and two Panzer divisions detached from the 5th Panzer Army, while the Allied forces were from the U.S. II Corps (Major General Lloyd Fredendall), the British 6th Armoured Division (Major-General Charles Keightley) and other parts of the First Army (Lieutenant-General Kenneth Anderson). The battle was the first major engagement between U.S. and Axis forces in Africa. The initial handful of American battalions were inexperienced and poorly led; they suffered many casualties and were successively pushed back over 50 miles from their original positions west of Faïd Pass, until they met an advancing brigade of the U.S. 1s