NAZI WRECKAGE

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIV, Issue 109, 10 May 1943, Page 3

NAZI WRECKAGE

BIZERTA AND TUNIS Graphic Story Of Allies' Final Attacks . ■ N.Z. Press Association—Copyright Rec. 1.30 p.m. LONDON, May 9. The Germans in Bizerta wrecked everything they had time to wreck, says Reuters correspondent at United States Army headquarters. However, the power plant and most public utilities were found to be intact. In the harbour the Germans sank eight ships and a ferry boat, and also wrecked docks and cranes. Describing the final assault, Allied soldiers said: "The whole of the hillsides around Bizerta were covered with German dead. We over-ran their gun positions, crushing the gun crews under the wheels of our tanks." The British United Press correspondent reports that the civilians killed in Tunis in all of the bombing, shelling and fighting are believed to total about 1800. The correspondent, in describing the wreckage in the Tunis dock area and warehouse district, said it was as bad as anything he saw in London during the blitz. Tunis People Hug Soldiers "In the midst- of machine-gun fire and exploding ammunition dumps we had a tremendous welcome from the people of Tunis," said a commentator broadcasting from North Africa yesterday afternoon. "They were so excited and so deeply moved that they did not hear the firing at all. "They pressed bunches of flowers on us. They filled our car with flowers, they wrung our hands and hugged us. They all said they had been waiting for us with such impatience and now they say, 'It's all over and we can live again.' There was no mistaking the warmth of the welcome. Flags were being waved everywhere. Even the roadways were strewn with flowers before tanks, and in the main avenue of Tunis women with babies in their arms rushed into the streets. From the youngest to the oldest inhabitant there were cheers going up."

Wild Cheers at Bizerta Describing the American entry into Bizerta, a correspondent says that as American tanks rumbled along the dusty highways leading to the town small groups of French stood at every wayside farm house cheering wildly at the Allied advance. The Germans hurled shells at the town and the approaches from gun emplacements on the opposite side of the channel which links the Mediterranean with Lake Bizerta. German shells were landing, in the town as the Americans drove in. Another correspondent says that in the town itself most of the people seemed to have either evacuated or gone into hiding. "The entry into Bizerta and Tunis was an example of what can be achieved by unification of the Allied army command," said General Eisenhower, Commander-in-Chief of the Allied forces in North Africa, in a statement issued in Algiers. He could not exaggerate the admiration everyone had for the British First Army, which had been fighting for six months to a day. Many of the First Army soldiers had not left the line for a single day.