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A Matter of Experience. U.S. ground troops had nothing behind them but training camps and the remote and vicarious experiences of Pearl Harbor, Guadalcanal, New Guinea. The British troops had been tempered by Norway, France, Dunkirk, Greece, Crete, Burma, many blunders and defeats, a great deal of desert and two years against the master, Rommel. The first U.S. phase in Tunisia was a time of learning, a waking up. Said an officer attached to Lieut. General George S. Patton's II Corps: "All this will be great practice for the next show."
Units new to battle had to learn how to force missions through to completion on schedule. Junior officers had to learn to do their jobs under fire. The troops had to learn to deal with mines—U.S. units borrowed British sappers to teach them mine-spotting techniques. The men of the II Corps learned what they had often been told, but needed to be shown: that artillery barrages are not enough; the enemy must be driven from his foxholes at the point of the bayonet. They learned that some objectives call for casualties, and if the objective is worth taking, so are the casualties, cruel as they are.
One thing the U.S. troops were learning was a healthy respect for the British. Said one American who watched the action at Fondouk: "I wish that those American strategists who beef about the British in the Stork Club could have breathed the dust of this valley today."