TUNISIAN SCENE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 78, 30 June 1943, Page 3

TUNISIAN SCENE

HOW GENERAL VON ARNIM SURRENDERED COLONEL GETS A SURPRISE Tunis, May 14. A lieutenant-colonel who commands a Gurkha battalion of the Indian 4th Division was the British officer who accepted the surrender of the Axis commander in Tunisia, General von Arnim, cabled William Munday to the “Sydney Morning Herald.”

The colonel had his Gurkha orderly, Rifleman Sarharna Limbu. with him, and a sergeant with s tommy-gun at the ready. The Germans stood in rigid rows.

“We were dirty, unshaven, and I had a plaster over one eye, and we must have looked real pirates to them,” the colonel told me to-day. For two days the Gurkhas had been fighting their way from the west through the hills, in which the Germans were making their last resistance. As the Gurkhas began to move along the valley from one end, men of an English regiment coming from the other got their machine-gun carriers on to the heights commanding the enemy headquarters. White flags went up, and in a few seconds a German officer drove out in a staff car flying another white flag to meet the Gurkhas. He saluted and said: “General von Arnim has sent me to offer his unconditional surrender.” “I was never so surprised in all my life,” the colonel said. “I got into the car—it was good to be able to ride again after walking so far —and said T will check up on this myself.’ ” He found all the Germans of the headquarters staff, except von Arnim, drawn up in a square, and as the British officer and his Gurkha orderly went past they gave him a stiff salute. Von Arnim was in his caravan, which was half hidden in the side of a hill. Outside was a still smouldering heap where he had personally burnt papers and other belongings. One suit case, into which he had packed what he wanted to take with him into captivity, was ready nearby, and the German general’s orderly stood beside it. DROVE WITH GENERALS At 3 p.m. von Arnim, with the British corps and divisional commanders, who had arrived in the interval, drove away. Before he went von Arnim said that there would be no more fighting in the headquarters area. “But I cannot answer for troops elsewhere, for I am out of touch with them,” he added. , Von Arnim spoke in German all the time, although it is believed he speaks English fluently. As he left, his officers and troops gave him the Nazi salute and a chorus of “Sieg Heil.” He had saluted all British officers punctiliously, and he stood in the car and saluted as he passed both British and German war cemeteries. While waiting for the British generals he spoke with British and Indian officers, and complimented them on their smartness. “Smart officers mean smart men.” he commented. When he found the units to whom he had surrendered had been with the Eighth Army all the way from Alamein, he said: “I am very glad to know that. It makes it easier to be able to surrender my armies to men against whom the bulk of them has fought so long.” Von Arnim surrendered his pistol to the British corps commander, who presented it to the colonel as a souvenir. The German headquarters caravan was bare. It had been stripped of nearly everything—but in a cupboard British officers found three bottles of champagne. They drank it on the spot to celebrate. It is revealed that the former Axis commander. Marshal Rommel, was wounded on the Mareth front and flown to Germany on March 18. He was hit by shrapnel when British gunners dropped 300 shells on his headquarters.