Faid Pass

Major Yarborough questions two German Prisoners
in Tunisia (Associated Press)

The following narrative is from one of our interviews with Lt. General Yarborough as he relates his recollections of the 509th's battle at Faid Pass in North Africa.  

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The first real tough encounter we faced was at a place called Faid Pass. We had come across a number of the advance elements of this heterogeneous force of Germans and Italians, and the intelligence reports we had suggested that they had a defensive position at Faid Pass. Faid Pass is on the way to the Tunisian east coast. The terrain features of the pass dominated that road.

Lt. Col. Ed Raff, a scrappy, cocky guy who was full of dynamite, decided we were going to attack Faid Pass and get around in back of it because their defenses were pointed in the other direction. We had a little bit of air support by the way of P-38s, we also had three or four half tracks that were open on top and had .50 cal machine guns on top. It was a seedy and heterogeneous little force taking on a battalion strength enemy made up of Germans and Italians. We came up to Faid during the night and deployed around the southern flank of the hill mass and began the attack at dawn, with the P-38s going in first and firing on the defenses. Then the open half tracks began to move in and then the enemy began to react and we found ourselves pinned down. We worked our way around the southern flank and up into the high ground that overlooked the pass. We took the enemy under fire from there and the son-of-a-gun was not going to move. Here we were across his line of communications and he was across ours. As I recall, we were in a stalemate and the French finally came up with a battery of artillery and began to bombard the pass from the forward side. By late afternoon we saw a white flag and they came out—the Italians sat in one place and the Germans sat in another. They had surrendered, but there was now the problem of taking care of prisoners. We were not prepared for that.

We decided to evacuate some of them to the rear in an ambulance with red and white markings on it when a German aircraft came over and began to strafe all of us and he hit the ambulance. The ambulance driver got out and was trying to get the wounded Germans out of the ambulance—as he was fumbling with the rear door, there was another burst of machine gun fire from the planes, and he was cut in half. Jack Thompson of the Chicago Tribune, had jumped in with us and had willed me a French vehicle. It was a Peugeot, I'll always remember that because it only ran when it wanted to and I had a driver that spent most of his time under the hood trying to find out what was wrong. Anyway, I was walking along the road because my vehicle had been knocked out by enemy air. When I came up to the ambulance I could hear these guys yelling inside the rear compartment--so I got into the front seat and shot the lock off the door with my carbine and finally got the Geraman prisoners out. The krauts strafed us again and then went away.

This was the nature of these "exercises" in that area and it showed that the Germans were not worried if you had a red cross on you or whatever. People who have not operated under enemy airpower have no idea as to the terror it can put into your heart. Every time we took to the roads we had to watch in all directions because they were there looking for us.

Source:

Personal interview with Lt. General Yarborough by Patrick O'Donnell.

Written by P. O'Donnell