STILL BEING ROUNDED UP IN TUNISIA

Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 May 1943, Page 3

STILL BEING ROUNDED UP IN TUNISIA

Vast Quantities of Undamaged Material Taken from Enemy MAGNIFICENT WORK DONE BY NAVY IN PROTECTING ALLIED SEA TRANSPORT LONDON, May 13. In Tunisia the great round-up of Axis prisoners is still going on. The Italian commander, General Messe, has surrendered, following on an order by Mussolini to the Italian forces to cease fire. The capture of General Messe brings the total of Axis generals taken prisoner to at least 16. It is also stated that a son-in-law of the King of Italy is among the prisoners. General Messe is reported to have surrendered to General Montgomery. Mussolini has promoted General Messe to the rank of marshal. A 8.8. C. correspondent, describing a journey up the Cape Bon Peninsula in a captured enemy staff car, said that time and again he had to pull off the road to make way for numeious convoys of enemy prisoners. Abandoned Axis vehicles were seen at first in ones or twos, but further on the whole countryside was littered with them, some totally destroyed but others abandoned undamaged. There were not only abandoned vehicles on the roadside, but weapons, ammunition and petrol cars m large quantities. Altogether, the Axis has abandoned millions of pounds worth of material on the peninsula. During’ the last six months, 11,000,000 tons of Allied merchant shipping from Great Britain and the United States entered the occupied ports of North Africa. The losses were surprisingly low. It was the little ships of the Navy that kept off the Axis U-boats and bombers, but behind them the big ships were always ready. They were the invisible screen which covered the terrific action of the light forces.