Orlando Ward

Major General Orlando Ward (November 4, 1891 – February 4, 1972) was a career United States Army officer who fought in both World War I and World War II. During the latter, as a major general, he commanded the 1st Armored Division during Operation Torch and during the first few months of the Tunisian campaign, before being relieved in March 1943. He trained and returned to Europe in 1945 as commander of the 20th Armored Division.

Ward also served as Secretary to the Army Chief of Staff, General George C. Marshall, in the critical years prior to the war and made major contributions to field artillery procedures in the 1930s that, a decade later, made the American field artillery especially effective in World War II.

Early life and military career

Born in Macon, Missouri, on November 4, 1891, Orlando Ward, at the age of 18, entered the United States Military Academy (USMA) at West Point, New York in 1909, graduating five years later (after being held back due to problems with the French curriculum) on June 12, 1914, shortly before the outbreak of World War I in Europe, as a second lieutenant in the Cavalry Branch of the United States Army. Among his fellow graduates were Frank W. Milburn, Jens A. Doe, Vicente Lim, Carl Spaatz, Ralph Royce, James L. Bradley, Brehon B. Somervell, Harry C. Ingles, Harold R. Bull, John B. Anderson, Charles P. Gross. All of these men, like Ward, would become general officers.

Ward's first assignment was as a commander of black cavalry troops, serving with 'E' Troop of the 9th Cavalry Regiment on border patrol in the wilds of Arizona and New Mexico. He later was part of Brigadier General John J. Pershing's forces chasing Pancho Villa into Mexico in 1916. He was awarded the Mexican Service Medal for serving in the Pancho Villa Expedition. Recognizing that the horse had a limited future, Ward became interested in artillery and transferred to the Field Artillery Branch and was sent to join the 10th Field Artillery Regiment at Camp Douglas, Arizona.

The United States entered World War I in April 1917, and Ward's regiment soon became part of the 3rd Infantry Division. He served on the Western Front with the American Expeditionary Force (AEF) during the war. During the Second Battle of the Marne, in July 1918, under conditions that rendered other officers in charge useless, he took charge of the 2nd Battalion, 10th Field Artillery Regiment and kept the battalion effective until the tide of Germans was turned back. He was later awarded the Silver Star Citation for his actions. He continued to serve on the Western Front until the war ended with the Armistice with Germany on November 11, 1918.

Between the wars

During the quiet interwar period, he continued in field artillery, but was assigned posts like ROTC instructor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison (where Charles Lindbergh was one of his students). Eventually, he became an instructor at the U.S. Army Field Artillery School at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, where he and others developed key forward observer procedures that made the U.S. Army's artillery effective in the upcoming war. He attended the United States Army War College from August 1935 until June 1936. While he was there he was promoted to lieutenant colonel on November 25, 1935. Shortly after his graduation, he assumed command of the 1st Battalion, 83rd Field Artillery Regiment, which he commanded for over eighteen months until being assigned to the War Department, where he served as a staff officer in a variety of roles for the next few years.

World War II

Ward was Secretary to General George C. Marshall, the U.S. Army Chief of Staff, from July 1939 to August 1941,
a critical time of building up in preparation for the American entry into World War II. Ward assisted Marshall in finding the resources to build the military while political forces were fighting to keep the United States out of the war and to help Britain. He worked closely there with Walter Bedell Smith and Omar Bradley. While he was there he received a promotion to the temporary rank of colonel on December 23, 1940. On August 5, 1941 he was promoted again, now to the temporary rank of brigadier general, shortly before assuming command of the 1st Armored Brigade in September.

North Africa

He left that post (and was promoted to the two-star rank of major general) to become the second commander of the 1st Armored Division, a Regular Army formation, in March 1942, three months after the American entry into World War II. The division was sent to Northern Ireland in May and participated in numerous exercises with the British Army stationed there. In November he supervised the deployment of his division across the Atlantic Ocean to French North Africa, which was brought piecemeal as part of Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of French North Africa, and subsequent operations. The failure of the 1st Armored Division to arrive intact and deploy as a single entity would have important consequences in later action against German forces in the Tunisian Campaign.

The 1st Armored Division's first action against the Germans was not promising, when Combat Command 'B' (CCB) and other Allied forces were thrown back after an advance by German forces. On the night of December 10–11, 1942, during a withdrawal from Medjez el Bab, the focal point of the enemy attack, scores of combat vehicles of CCB—tanks, half-tracks, and tank destroyers — had bogged down in thick mud and had to be abandoned. The tanks were so badly mired that the advancing Germans themselves could not extricate them. It was a crippling loss. In its brief experience in action, CCB had lost 32 medium and 46 light tanks.Mayo, p. 121 The combat vehicles that remained were in poor condition after their long overland journey to the front lines.

At the Battle of Kasserine Pass in February 1943, the first major battle between the Americans and Germans during World War II, elements of the 1st Armored Division were sent reeling back by a series of sudden enemy offensive thrusts. The dispersal of the 1st Armored Division into separate combat commands across the front by British Lieutenant General Kenneth Anderson, commanding the British First Army, with the connivance of Ward's immediate superior, Major General Lloyd Fredendall, the U.S. II Corps commander, had angered Ward from the start, as it greatly weakened the division's ability to repulse concentrations of German armor and to shift his forces in response to enemy thrusts (Fredendall was later relieved of command and replaced by Major General George S. Patton). However, Ward also bore responsibility for his failure to consult British tank commanders on German panzer tactics and to disseminate that information to his subordinate commanders . As a consequence, elements of the 1st Armored Division at Faïd fell victim to one of ''Generalfeldmarschall'' Erwin Rommel's familiar tactics when they pursued German tanks feigning retirement into a screen of 88 mm high-velocity German anti-tank guns, resulting in large American armor losses.

After the rout at Kasserine, Patton at first counseled, then admonished Ward of the need for personal leadership of his division in order to keep German forces under pressure.D'Este, Carlo, ''Patton: A Genius for War'', Harper-Collins (1996), , , p. 467 Impatient with the progress of the 1st Armored Division, Patton took the unusual step of ordering Ward to personally lead a night assault on the Meknessy Heights, a series of stubbornly defended knolls in front of the 1st Armored Division's lines.Atkinson, Rick, ''An Army At Dawn'', Macmillan Press (2003), , , p. 450 Ward obeyed the order, and the attack was initially successful. Wounded in the eye, he was awarded a Purple Heart, Silver Star, and later the Distinguished Service Cross. However, the stalemate east of Meknassy

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