GLAD TO SURRENDER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 May 1943, Page 4

GLAD TO SURRENDER

GERMANS IN TUNISIA SOME AMAZING SCENES COMPANIES GIVE THEMSELVES UP (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) (Received This Day. Noon.) LONDON, May 11. Reuter’s correspondent states that whole German companies, on the northern front, gave themselves up, fully equipped with food and ammunition. Infantry from the best regiments were seen streaming along roads, some making the “V’ sign with their fingers. A most amazing scene occurred on the Mateur Road, when six cheering Germans drove to meet their captors in an Arab cart, drawn by bedecked horses. A message from Bizerta says 40 haggard men were the only survivors of the 15th Armoured Division, which was the crack panzer formation of the Afrika Korps and the particular opponent for two years of the British Seventh Armoured Division. OVER 100,000 PRISONERS WITH MORE TO BE COUNTED. (Received This Day, 11.55 a.m.) LONDON. May 11. With the curtain falling with dramatic suddenness on the Tunisian campaign, a spokesman at Allied Headquarters in Algiers tonight said prisoners now total over 100,000 and more remain to be counted. Twenty thousand were taken at the entrance to Cape Bon Peninsula. The Germans seem to have been surprised by the rapidity of the British advance, for the roads are intact and littered with transport and war material which is undamaged. However, the British are now advancing along the two coastal roads of the peninsula, which are filled with equipment set on fire by the enemy.

The spokesman added that what probably will be the last tank battle of the campaign is in progress in the Grombalia area, between remnants of the Tenth Panzer Division and British armoured elements.

Correspondents at Allied Headquarters say the picture from the front today is of bewildered Germans surrendering in droves, with a core of battle-stained troops standing firm as the front crumbles. The end is now approaching. It is pointed out that enemy reports that the defenders would fight to the last man are false. They are surrendering despite messages from Hitler and Mussolini, which were revealed after prisoners had been taken.

The Rome correspondent of the Stockholm newspaper “Tidningen” reports that General Messe, the Italian commander of the Axis forces in the Cape Bon Peninsula, was ordered to fight to the last man.

The “Daily Express” correspondent in Tunis says he has been in a prisoners’ camp, where Germans and Italians are flowing in at the rate of a thousand an hour. The flimsy wire fence cannot enclose them all, so the remainder just roam around. They don’t attempt to escape. They are famished, exhausted and cowed to a point where they only want to be cared for.

The Algiers radio announced that an officer picked up when the Navy sank three small craft was a German general.

TRIBUTES TO FORCES IN "LORDS & COMMONS (Received This Day. 9.51 a.m.) RUGBY, May 11. Both the House of Lords and the House of Commons went into secret session for a few minutes before Lord Cranborne and Mr Attlee made war statements in the respective Houses. Lord Cranborne concluded his statement by expressing the admiration of the House and rendering thanks to the men of the United Nations who had played a part in winning a signal victory.

Lord Addison described the victory as “an achievement not surpassed by any previous example.” It spoke volumes, he said, for the organisation and co-operation which the different branches of supply and other services must have been trained to exercise. Lord Samuel paid a special tribute to “the tenacity, foresight and efficient direction” of Mr Churchill. GERMAN RESISTANCE CRUMBLING LIKE MUD WALL IN CLOUDBURST. (Received This Day, 1.5 p.m.) LONDON, May 11. Major-General Borowietz, commander of the 15th Division, said, as he surrendered to the Americans: “I have not a tank, not a gun, not even a grenade left —only forty tank men.” An Allied spokesman said the Germans have lost their nerve. They are not interested in any last gallant fight. British tanks advanced virtually without opposition 18 miles up the eastern coast of Cape Bon Peninsula. A large amount of German equipment is falling into our hands.

The 'National Broadcasting Corporation correspondent at Algiers says the peninsula has been completely cut off from the mainland since the early morning and the whole area is crumbling like a mud wall in a cloudburst. Five thousand prisoners taken by the British included 600 from the crack Hermann Goering Division. The Berlin radio’s commentator, Captain Sertorius, admitted that communications between the Axis forces inside and outside the peninsula had been cut and added: “It can only be a very short time before both groups have spent their last ammunition. The blockade of the peninsula from sea and air has completely excluded all possibility of supplying our forces. If we still dwell on the final phase in the Tunisian fighting,, it is only for the purpose of honouring the soldierly attitude of the Germans and Italians who are holding on to a lost position.” ENEMY COLLAPSE ' IN THE ZAGHOUAN AREA. REPORTED OFFICIALLY BY FRENCH. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, May 11. A French special communique states that German forces in the area of Zaghouan asked the French commander for an armistice. It is added that the French terms of unconditional surrender and the handing over entire of German war material, were accepted.