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JOYOUS WELCOME

GIVEN TO ALLIED TROOPS BY THE PEOPLE OF TUNIS STREETS STREWN WITH FLOWERS. CITY OF BIZERTA FOUND DESERTED. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, May 8. “In the midst of machine-gun fire and exploding ammunition dumps, we had a tremendous welcome from the people of Tunis,” declared a commentator who broadcast from North Africa this afternoon. “They were so excited, so deeply moved, that they didn’t hear the firing at all. “They pressed bunches of flowers on us. They filled our car with flowers. They wrung our hands and hugged us. They all said they had been waiting for us with such impatience, and now they say ‘lt’s all over, and we can live again.’ “There was no mistaking the warmth of the welcome. Flags were being waved everywhere. Even the roadways were strewn with flowers before the tanks and in the main avenue’ of Tunis. Women with babies in their arms rushed into the streets. From the youngest to the oldest inhabitant there were cheers going up.” The commentator, describing the advance on Tunis, said: “We came along the road from Mejez toward Massicault, and were told that it was being heavily shelled, so we branched off over a dusty track which had not been cleared of mines—sappers were working on it as we came through. When we came out on the Massicault Road again shells were bursting on both sides of the Mejez Plain. The Germans were still in the hills and still fighting; our thrust at Tunis had gone through them and there were a lot of them to be cleared up. BATTLES ALL THE WAY. “We were driving to Tunis through battles all the way. We stopped to watch the shelling of a farm, where 50 German parachutists were holding out. and then we pushed on to a corner in the road just short of the last ridge of hills that the Germans could hold before Tunis. They were still holding it. Just to the right of the road and not far ahead, two German guns were firing at a squadron' of our tanks. “Apparently the Germans were still checking us. I climbed to the top of a windmill which made an excellent observation post, and I could see the tanks manoeuvring for position and the spitting flash of the German guns and our tanks replying just below me in the fields. Then, suddenly, we scored two direct hits and the firing ceased. “Even so, the position was obscure. There were Germans on both flanks of the hill, but we heard that our armoured cars were in the outskirts of Tunis, so we drove on along the quiet road, and as we came over the crest of the

hill where the Germans had just been firing at our tanks we saw the white city of Tunis stretching before us.” “It was a pushover,” says a correspondent who entered Bizerta with the leading United States reconnaissance company. “There was scattered fire from German eighty-eights. The Americans entered the deserted city and at dusk American tanks, with seventy-fives, were picking out and cleaning up a few scattered, isolated pockets cf resistance, from which the enemy was firing his last ammunition.”

Permanent link to this item
Hononga pūmau ki tēnei tūemi

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/WAITA19430510.2.26

Bibliographic details
Ngā taipitopito pukapuka

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 May 1943, Page 3

Word count
Tapeke kupu
532

JOYOUS WELCOME Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 May 1943, Page 3

JOYOUS WELCOME Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 May 1943, Page 3

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