Saturday, March 6, 1943. Fredendall out, Patton in. Rommel's swan song in North Africa. Freedom from Want. Stalin promotes himself while his Party praises him with B.S.

Wyomingite Maj. Gen. Lloyd Fredendall was relieved of his command of II Corps and replaced by Maj. Gen. George S. Patton.

Patton as a Lieutenant General

Patton, widely regarded as the premier American expert on armored warfare, was very quickly promoted to Lt. General.  Fredendall was assigned stateside duty.  His reputation never recovered after Kasserine Pass, and he did not return to Cheyenne in later years.  He died in 1963 in California, having retired from the Army in 1946.

Fredendall was twice appointed to West Point and twice dropped out.  Senator F. E. Warren was willing to appoint him a third time, but the Academy was unwilling to accept him.  He instead attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and thereafter entered the Army in 1907.  His trouble at West Point was with math, which ironically was also very problematic for the home educated George S. Patton.  His performance in World War One was excellent.

His home state has forgotten him.

The Battle of Medenine was fought in Tunisia.  It was a spoiling attack by the Afrika Korps which resulted in a costly defeat.  It was also Rommel's last command action in North Africa.

Things were going downhill for the Axis in North Africa quickly.

Freedom from Want appeared in the Saturday Evening Post.  It proved to be the most popular of the four freedom's illustrations, and is regarded as one of Rockwell's best.  The accompanying essay was by Phlipinno, immigrant Carlos Sampayan Bulosan.

I wonder to what extent we've forgotten this freedom?

Joseph Stalin, who put many into the want of starvation, promoted himself to the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union.  Contemporaneously, the Soviet Communist Party proclaimed him "the greatest strategist of all times and all peoples".

M'eh.

Unfortunately, his adopted home has not forgotten him and has drawn the wrong conclusions about his leadership.  First siding with the Germans during World War Two, his miscalculation about what he could extract from them in order to join the war against the British Empire led to the Germans charging ahead with a war against the Soviet Union for which it was not prepared.  It took two years for the USSR to form a sufficient armed mob in order to counter to begin to throw the Germans back, which relied on, in spite of wanting to ignore it, massive Western Allied support.

The Battle of Blackett Strait was fought between the U.S. Navy and the Japanese Imperial Navy.

A small engagement, the Japanese lost 100% of their two destroyer force.