BIZERTA

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 111, 13 May 1941, Page 6

BIZERTA

BROODING SILENCE

CONVOY SITUATION

NAZI RECONNAISSANCES The uncertain altuatlon In French North Africa is described here by an American correspondent, who has had much experience in Europe as well as North Africa. It was written prior to the German drive In Libya. ((By JAY ALLEN.) (Tunisia). On the air waves we hear from London, Ankara, and New York that the Germans are massing men and planes in Sicily for an attack on Bizerta. Your correspondent has just made a motor trip to Bizerta from Tunis and along the coast to Porto Farina and along Cape Bon. There were no signs of nervousness along the coast, the men in command there are as cool as General Weygand seemed to be on the radio when he said, "There are secrets of State that you cannot know." Bizerta is sixty miles from Tunis. To get a car you need a requisition, txas is so scarce that in Tunis, save for a dozen official cars, there is no transportation except by tram and horsecab. Those sixty miles are through rolling reddish land. The French chauffeur says, "That is a French farm; there is an Italian village; the Arabs hate us both, but hate the Italians more. What will happen to the Italians if ever Tunis is bombed 9 They are already almost afraid to go to the Arab markets. Funny thing but the Arabs think of the Italians as already licked, not us. Maybe we are not licked." On he went, but you found yourself wondering what Reich Marshal Hermann Goering's parachutists could do in these miles of open country. Then you dip down toward | the lake of Bizerta, copper and blue in the late afternoon sun. It is the mid-Mediterranean Gibraltar and perhaps more formidable by the standards of modern warfare, since it is a sea and land plane hase as well as a naval base, and is not menaced bv a hinterland in the hands of a potential enemy. Eight miios the harbour runs in f'om the sea and the guide book says that all the navies of the world anchor here. At the moment all that lies here is a flotilla of rose flamingoes. At Ferryville, the arsenal where the greatest warships can be tucked away, there is an ancient gunboat. The German Concentrations At Bizerta itself, which lies along the canal that joins the lake and the Mediterranean, there are three destroyers. At the air base, Si Ahmed, the hangars are all closed. My chauffeur says, "You could not guess what is in those hills beyond."' I could guess because I know. Everybody knows. What matters is, first, how quickly dismantled coastal artillery, not to mention planes and anti-aircraft guns, can be put back into service and, second, how quickly the French Fleet could get here from Toulon. Again, everybody knows that the fleet can cross in nineteen hours. The point is whether the orders to sail would be given in time. When you ask the first question here, people grin. When you ask the second, you usually get this answer: "You have been in Vichy. What do you say?" Admiral Jean Darlan's pledge about net turning over the French Fleet to the Germans was read here with interest. Opinions vary as to the strength of • the German concentration in Sicily. There is agreement on three or four thousand ground men for the Nazi planes, but estimates as to the actual number of aircraft vary from 200 to 1000 and estimates of German troops from 10,000 to 100,000. On the number of French aircraft French territorial waters at night generally agree on 400; on the number supposedly out of commission, no one agrees any more than they

agree on the number of pilots and army and navy officers who have trickled down in recent weeks from France. The military authorities here were deeply impressed by the ravages wrought by German planes on British convoys in the Mediterranean, but all grant that the convoys still go by at night and, moreover, they grant that the Italian convoys for Tripoli are hard-pressed. The Italians dash from Sicily to Frenc hterritorial waters at night and hug the coast. Which has not prevented accidents, as evidenced in the last ten days by debris, some of it ghastly, cast up on the beaches from Cape Bon to Sfax. Because of shoals around the Kerkennah Islands of Sfax, the convoys have to head out to sea, and it so happens that that's the point of the Tunisia coast nearest Malta; it is seven hours by motor boat. Germans Refuel—British Interned. It is the consensus here that most of the aerial attacks on British convoys come from Sicily, as the Pantelleria airfield is supposed to allow only two planes to take off at a time. What fears are felt here are less'of an attack by sea, in which the Italian Fleet would have to face the French, supposedly, but of a swift aerial offensive against the forts and landing fields, particularly the field inland at Gafsa, where an Italian air commission is based. There is also a landing field at El Aouina. On this field on January 6 there suddenly landed one afternoon six Stuka bombers with two officers and ten men. They said they got lost on their way from Naples to Sicily, overshot their mark as a result of a taihvind and finally hit the African coast. The French, commander informed them they were interned, which fate they accepted philosophically. But on January 8. by orders from Vichy they were refuelled and allowed to depart. While here the German flyers quarrelled with the Italians and to the French they noisily expressed contempt for their ally. The pilot and radioman of a British bomber shot over Ferryville on November 29 are still interned, with ten other British airmen.—"Auckland Star" and N.A.NA,