Patton’s Payback: The Battle of El Guettar and General Patton’s Rise to Glory

Historian Moore (Uncommon Valor) skillfully tells how the American Army turned defeat into victory under Patton as commander of the American II Corps. The Battle of El Guettar, named after a small Tunisian town, proved to be a turning point for the Germans in North Africa, the American Army, and Lt. General George S. Patton (1885–1945). By early 1943, Rommel’s famed Afrika Korps and the Italian Army mauled the American Army in a series of disastrous defeats in North Africa. Tapped by General Eisenhower to lead the II Corps, Patton quickly set about reestablishing shaken troops’ morale and their fighting prowess. At the Battle of El Guettar the American Army, under Patton’s hard-charging lead, turned the tide, enabling the Allies to seize control of North Africa and pave the way for the invasion of Sicily. Moore interviewed several of Patton’s surviving veterans and those tales bring to life Patton’s complex character, which contributed to his outsized reputation: vain and vulgar, but also demanding and intimately aware of the larger battlefield situation.