ENEMY SURRENDER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 June 1943, Page 3

ENEMY SURRENDER

“On May 12 we picked up a wireless message to us from Marshal Messe, commanding the enemy First Army, which included the 90th Light Division, the 164th Division and the 20th Italian Corps. Emissaries from both the German and Italian commanders came in to our lines, and Marshal Messe, complete with his staff, surrendered unconditionally to me on May 13. With him came General Liebenstein, commanding the German 164th Division.

“Resistance now ceased, and white flags appeared everywhere. Many of the prisoners from the enemy First Army were collected by the British forces striking south from the Cape Bon Peninsula, but another 31,558 were taken on our corps front. For many days prisoners, both German and Italian, were marching back to prisoner-of-war camps in the rear. “So ended the battle for North Africa, with disaster for the enemy comparable to Stalingrad,” said General Freyberg. “The Tunis bridgehead, which the Germans had boasted would be held, was in our hands, and more than 200,000 prisoners and great numbers of guns, tanks and other weapons and equipment of all kinds were captured. The presence of ships of the Royal Navy actually in the Gulf of Tunis, and the continuous sweeps of Allied bombers successfully discouraged any attempt at evacuation by the Italian Navy, ’which did not put to sea. The whole Axis force in the Tunis bridgehead will be reported in Germany and Italy killed, wounded or prisoner-of-war.”