Those who imagined that the arrival of a major American force in North Africa would immediately tip the balance against Rommel's Afrika Korps were to be proved badly wrong. In what turned out to be a disastrously over-ambitious plan, the 1st (US) Army sailed across the Atlantic and went straight in the Operation TORCH landings in Tunisia. Just how ill-prepared the GI Army and its generals were became horrifically apparent at the Kasserine Pass. In his typically thorough and fast moving style Charles Whiting examines these events and the reasons for the debacle, which shook America deeply.