Seeing the Elephant at Kasserine Pass. “Patton’s Payback: The Battle of El Guettar and Patton’s Rise to Glory”. Book Review

Patton’s Payback : The Battle of El Guettar and General Patton’s Rise to Glory. Author: Stephen L. Moore. Publisher: Caliber. Price $ 30.00 Stephen L. Moore’s 2022 book, Patton’s Payback: The Battle of El Guettar and General Patton’s Rise to Glory explores a chapter of the US Army’s history that rarely gets as much attention – the battles of Kasserine Pass and El Guettar. These events are perhaps best known in popular culture from the opening act of the 1970 movie Patton. Moore’s book is a narrative of the events following the Allied landings in French North Africa. The story carries across the German push through Kasserine Pass, the following US Army counterattack and the collapse of the Axis troops in Tunisia. Moore focuses the narrative at the operational level on the events that impact the US Army’s II Corps, initially commanded by General Lloyd Fredenhall, but famously commanded by George S. Patton from March into April of 1943. Despite its title, the book is less directly about George...

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