MARGINAL COMMENT
By HAROLD NICOLSON
IT is a strange experience to visit Tunis a year, almost to the very day, after the British armies delivered that city from the Germans. The aeroplane which brought me from Algiers soared up into the sunshine above the heavy clouds which had loured over the aerodrome. But as we approached the area of the battlefields the clouds parted ; one had a momentary glimpse, between the flying patches of white fog, of green fields and red-roofed farm
buildings ; and then quite suddenly the loops and bends of the Medjerda river twined themselves out of the mountains and into the broad plain which carries them to Utica and the sea. That little town down there must be Medjez-el-Bab, those patches of rock and scrub below must represent Grenadier Hill and Liongstop ; but even as we strain our eyes to identify these landmarks the machine has swept onwards, over wide stretches of bright green fields and vineyards, to where the great lakes of Tunis glimmer in the sun. The aeroplane swings sideways in a wide circle, and for a moment the large view is hidden by its great grey wing ; and as it rights itself again one sees against the distant blue the twin cones of Bou Kornine, that immutable mountain upon which the tear- stained eyes of Dido, the angry eyes of Hamilcar and Hasdrubal, must have fixed themselves in agony or rage. It was strange, after such excitements, to find oneself again in a French provincial town. There at the street corners were the familiar enamelled plaques bearing in white letters upon blue such names as Boulevard Gain- betta, Avenue Didon, or Rue Cambon. The twin towers of the Cathedral are surmounted by the Croix de Lorraine—not, I fear, in deference to General de Gaulle, but as symbols of the Arch- bishopric of Carthage—and as the bells ring out the swallows dart and flutter above the square. Below they are selling flowers and lemonade, and the Tunisian spahis mount guard in front of the Residence.
* * * * On closer inspection, however, it becomes apparent that Tunis has
not yet returned to its accustomed somnolence. There are American military police at the main cross-roads, and notices in English bear- ing such instructions as " Damaged Bridge Ahead " or "This way to Sfax and Sousse." Outside the town' are enormous dumps of captured or destroyed material ; the rusted frames of many thousand lorries and tanks are grouped under olive-trees, and Italian prisoners in droves hum round them removing any metal which can still prove of value. Here and there among the fields discarded strands of barbed wire are all that remain of the vast cages in which the Afrika Korps were sorted out. There are military cemeteries outside the town, some of them English cemeteries, with their neat white crosses and names ; others of them are German cemeteries, in which the
crosses are shaped in the form of the Iron Cross, with little wasp-
like swastikas painted on them in white. A few German prisoners were planting geraniums among them as we passed. The town itself is practic4ly undamaged, and even the high block of unfur- nished flats from which the Germans disputed our final entry has now been completed, and acquired a civilian appearance. Only in the dock area can one see today the effects of the great damage that was done. And in and out of the heavy lorry traffic the French and Arabs drive themselves in little carts, curiously reminiscent of the old Punic chariots, formed of a seat nailed across the axle of an abandoned motor-car and drawn by bewildered horses trotting between huge shafts. The shops are almost empty, and upon the inside and the outside of the few trams the Arabs cluster like flies.
* * * * I went out one morning to Hammam Lif, the scene of the strange moon-lit battle in which the Sixth Armoured Division imposed upon the Germans a most spectacular defeat. It stands there under the cliffs of the Bou Kornine, a small Tunisian Peacehaven beside the beach. The Gendarmerie building which guards the narrow strip between the mountain and the sea still bears upon its plaster the pock-marks of our fire, but the adjoining palace of the Bey has
had a fresh coat of paint and whitewash, and its dosed shutters are bright green against white walls. Down by the beach is a row of little two-storied villas bearing such names as "Villa Ninna" or " Villa Mathilde." It was along that little stretch of beach, beside those terrified villas, that the tanks of the Sixth thrust their way through the surf. Men of the Grenadiers had clambered on to the roofs of the tanks, and the moon flashed on their bayonets and sparkled on the foam below. The sea laps idly today upon those two hundred yards of sand, and only a crushed and battered drain-pipe remains to show where the Division thundered past. Yet it was that short, fierce battle by the sea which broke the German resistance and enabled our light armour to dash through the night to Hammamet, to seal off the tip of the Cap Bon peninsula, and to join up with the Eighth Army near Enfidaville. The sand bears no marks of that terrific onslaught ; there is little there today which could remind one that upon this spot a British army inflicted upon the Wehrmacht one of the sharpest defeats it has ever known.
• The Tunisians themselves appear somewhat vague regarding the series of great battles which roared and rattled suddenly among their villas and their fields. Even so, I imagine, had one visited Charleroi on June loth, 1816, the inhabitants would have spoken slightingly of last year's battle over there around la Haie Sainte. Yet there are others to whom the terrors and excitements of those six months remain as the most vivid of nightmSres. They will tell one how, when they first heard of the Allied landings in North Africa, they expected at any moment to find our lorries in the streets ; how, while they waited, the sky became black one morning with German trans- port planes, and how wit1in a few hours the Gestapo had fixed their grip upon the town ; of how they listened breathlessly to the sound of gunfire in the direction of Massicault and Mateur, and of how, as the sound died gradually away into the hills, they gazed at each other in an agony of fear. Then followed six months of anxious waiting, during which they would strain and crouch to hear the Allied wireless, and whisper to each other that the Eighth Army had taken Tripoli or that the First Army had been strongly rein- forced. Then followed the period of air-bombardment, when the bombs screamed and crashed down by the docks. And when May came a sense of uneasiness began to spread among the German armies of occupation. The end appears to have arrived quite unex- pectedly ; at one moment the Germans were still dominating the town in perfect discipline and order ; at the next moment their lorries seemed to be rushing in confusion to east and west ; and as the rain descended upon the streets that afternoon of May 7th the rattle of machine-gun fire could be heard from the outskirts, and in a moment the British were in the town.
* * * *
There was one man whOm I met who told me a personal story. He was a young Englishman who had come out to Tunis as agent for a firm which manufactured sewing-machines. He became stranded there in 1939, and during the Vichy period he was un- molested. But when the Germans entered he had to disguise him- self as a French workman and remain in concealment. On the afternoon of May 7th he was hiding in his shuttered room_gazing through the slits in the shutters at the street below. A German lorry packed with troops lumbered past and then stopped suddenly. The soldiers jumped off the lorry and walked forward holding their hands aloft. He gazed at them in bewilderment, not realising what this strange conduct might portend ; and as he gazed he saw a British armoured car creep round the corner of the street. " What did you do then? " I asked him. " I didn't do too well," he answered. " You see, I had been- living for six months on such horse-meat and garbage as I could find. I didn't dare to apply for ration-cards. I suppose I was in a weak state. I tried to go out and speak to them, but my legs would not carry me. I rolled on the floor crying like a child."
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