AT AN END

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 May 1943, Page 4

AT AN END

ENEMY RESISTANCE IN TUNISIA SAVE FOR ISOLATED POCKETS STATEMENT BY GENERAL EISENHOWER. HAMMAMET & ZAGHOUAN ’ OCCUPIED. (By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright) (Received This Day, Noon.) ALGIERS, May 9. General Eisenhower stated that organised Axis resistance in Tunisia, except for a few isolated pockets, appeared to have ended. A communique issued in Algiers says the French have occupied Zaghouan and also Hammamet.

AXIS REMNANTS BEING MOPPED UP AT LEISURE. “ENEMY IN HELL OF A MESS.” (Received This Day, 11.50 a.m.) LONDON, May 9. The Allied forces have crushed enemy resistance in North Tunisia except for isolated pockets, which will be mopped up at leisure. General von Arnim’s battered remnants, hastening towards Cape Bon, are taking a terrible punishment from the air, while Allied columns are closing in on the base of Cape Bon Peninsula from all directions and with all speed, each determined to outdo the other in fulfilling General Alexander's order to kick the Axis forces into the sea. “If there ever was a beaten army, this is it,” says the Columbia Broadcasting system’s Algiers correspondent. “They simply do not know what to think. They are dazed and disorganised. They have run away from perfectly good long-prepared positions. They for once have forgotten to lay mines. They leave their clothes, food and guns. They just break.” The British United Press correspondent at Allied Headquarters says the First Army, Eighth Army and French Nineteenth Corps are all converging on the base of the Cape Bon Peninsula, sweeping the Germans rapidly into a pocket. The full weight of the Allied armour has been thrown in against the disorganised The British Sixth Armoured Division is driving as a spearhead south-east along the coast, after overcoming severe opposition at Hamman Lif, and is now nearing Souliman. Everywhere, except along the coast road, German resistance is con-| fused. An Allied Headquarters spokesman summed up the position when he said: “The enemy is in a hell of a mess.”

NO SANCTUARY AXIS TROOPS HEMMED IN ON ALL SIDES. RAIN OF BOMBS & BULLETS FROM SKY. (Received This Day, 12.20 p.m.) LONDON, May 9. The enemy forces which reached Cape Bon Peninsula are finding no sanctuary, says Reuter’s correspondent. They have the sea, under Allied control, on three sides, with powerful armoured and infantry forces pressing them ever harder from the base of the peninsula, and bombs and bullets raining down from Allied planes with almost undisputed control of the skies. Allied airmen have already stopped

several Axis attempts to escape by boat. Our airmen hit the Italians and Ger- ' mans before they got far enough for the waiting Allied naval vessels to make contact with them. About* thirty men scrambling into small boats on the east side of Cape Bon were killed and scattered. Allied airmen patrolling along the coast also broke up an enemy party getting into small boats at Porto Farina, east of Bizerta. Allied airmen are pursuing and attacking Axis troops

wherever they have not surrendered. The Algiers radio stated that the Americans have completed the mopping up of the Bizerta area, where organised resistance has ceased. They captured three German divisional commanders, with their staffs. Five thousand Germans surrendered unconditionally in the Bizerta area this morning, after vain attempts to evacuate. The Allies today occupied Tebourba and Carthage. Heavy fighting continues in the vicinity of Hamman Lif and also north of Zaghouan. Reuter’s Algiers correspondent says many Axis troops, trapped following on the Allies’ capture of La Goulette, Carthage, Tebourba and Djebeida, are now incapable of further resistance. They are burying equipment and surrendering without a fight. Strong Allied tank and infantry forces are attacking all along a roughly improvised line, which remnants of the Italian and German armies are attempting to hold in a rearguard stand, on a semi-circle from Mammamet to the Gulf of Tunis. The respite which the shattered Axis units may gain is momentary, because the mouth of the Cape Bon Peninsula is being sealed up under Allied converging drives. One report from Algiers states that the Allies have already taken prisoner 60,000 Axis troops. The Exchange Telegraph Agency’s Tunis correspondent reports that the First Army alone had captured 25,000 Italians and Germans by Friday night. A majority of the prisoners stated that the speed of our push surprised them.

NAVAL GRIP GREAT FORCE OF MOTOR TORPEDO-BOATS. SWEEPING THE SICILIAN STRAITS (Received This Day, 12.5 p.m.) LONDON, May 9. The Allied navies are flanking the enemy’s evacuation lane from Tunisia to Sicily with the greatest concentration of motor torpedoboats ever assembled in history, says a British United Press correspondent with the British Fleet. These boats are sweeping the enemy’s only remaining channel of escape. Reuter's correspondent with the fleet says the weather tends to favour the passage of small craft through “Suicide Alley,” between Tunisia and Sicily. The nights are pitch black.

“Driving rain and sleet last night cut down visibility practically to zero,” the correspondent adds. “We made contact with several small craft, which, after a burst of our gunfire, hurried away in the darkness. It seems clear as a result of observation during the past few nights that the Axis is not prepared to risk a big loss of ships, but is using fast and elusive destroyers, torpedo-boats and Sinbel ferryboats. The Sinbels are heavily constructed, flat-bottomed, twin-hulled vessels, connected by a platform bridge on which are mounted plane screws, giving them a speed of about ten knots. They are strongly _ armed and can accommodate a fair-sized cargo. During the nightlong sweep there was hardly a moment when enemy planes were not out in the vicinity. Some of them swooped low, enabling us to pepper them with flak. Many of these planes are large troopcarriers. One Allied ship shot down two of them as they flew over at mast height.”

ROMMEL & VON ARNIM

BOTH OUT OF TUNISIA. COMMAND LEFT TO ITALIAN. LONDON, May 9. Berlin admits that Rommel and ven Arnim have left Tunisia. One report states that an Italian now commands the Axis forces in Tunisia .