| Original caption: “Row boat and rifle left on the beach of Cap Bon by the Germans.” A 7.92 millimeter (0.324 caliber) Karabiner 98k Mauser rifle leans against an old rowboat on the beach at Cape Bon, Tunisia. After several months of fighting, the Allied forces cornered the Nazi Germans on the Cape Bon Peninsula. The surrender, which occurred in May 1943, marked the final defeat of the Axis powers in North Africa, and the Free French reclaimed control of the former colony of Tunisia. West of Protville, elements of the United Kingdom Royal Army 6th Armoured Division linked up with the United States Army 1st Battalion, 1st Armored Regiment, 1st Armored Division on May 9, 1943. As the 1st Battalion turned north on the Bizerte road, passing thousands of prisoners and great mounds of discarded arms and equipment, the United States Army 3rd Battalion, 13th Armored Regiment, and the United Kingdom Royal Army 11th Hussars took the road to Porto Farina. Their arrival saved many enemy troops, who were busy trying to lash together rafts, from certain death. This was because, on May 8, United Kingdom Royal Navy Admiral Andrew B. Cunningham (January 7, 1883 – June 12, 1963) had established “Operation Retribution,” so named after the agonies suffered by British troops during their evacuation of Greece and Crete in 1941. Moving in every available destroyer for close patrol work by day and night off the peninsula, he signaled: “Sink, burn, and destroy. Let nothing pass!” The “Kelibia Regatta,” as destroyer captains termed it after a coastal town on the Cap Bon peninsula, took place in heavily mined waters outside an exclusion zone covered by Allied aircraft and shore batteries. On the night of May 8-9, HMS Tartar, with 2 other destroyers, HMS Laforey and HMS Loyal, sank 2 ships with their cargoes of ammunition and tanks. On the Tartar, Midshipman Peter R. Hay (July 25, 1923 – November 22, 2005) could hear the shouts of men in the water. “We circled round once more, but it would have been useless to try and pick them up then. I was glad to see the davits and falls on one of the ships were empty, and two or three large black shapes were, no doubt, the ship’s lifeboats.” “There is no doubt that the blood of the Mediterranean Fleet was up,” remarked Captain Angus D. Nicholl (November 17, 1896 – April 12, 1977) of cruiser HMS Penelope, “and that even the smallest attempts at a ‘Dunkirk evacuation’ were efficiently and ruthlessly dealt with.” When a half dozen German torpedo boats opened fire on the Force Q destroyers HMS Laforey and HMS Tartar, the former rammed one of the enemy vessels, cutting it in half. The lethal resolve of the British fleet was all too apparent to its Axis foe. Lamerton’s radiomen, listening to enemy chatter, overheard, “Destroyer overtaking…all is lost.” On the afternoon of May 11, 1943, the gray hulks of Hunt-class British Royal Navy destroyers HMS Tetcott and HMS Zetland sliced through the glistening Mediterranean waters in the narrow Strait of Sicily, their officers scanning the nearby Tunisian coastline. Lieutenant Commander H. Richard Rycroft (December 28, 1911 – October 28, 1985), the Captain of HMS Tetcott, trained his binoculars on Kelibia, an idyllic Tunisian fishing town on the Cap Bon peninsula, founded by the Carthaginians in the 5th century Before the Common Era, as the fortified town of Aspis. Millennia after a Roman fleet besieged Aspis in 255 Before the Common Era amid the 1st Punic War, warships had returned to Kelibia’s coastline. Rycroft spotted his prey and directed HMS Tetcott toward a small boat filled with fleeing Germans. The few enemy soldiers posed little threat, but the British destroyer, its bow surging through the azure water, showed no signs of slowing. As it sped past the enemy vessel, the ship’s log noted, Tetcott “lobbed a depth charge close to it, blowing it to bits.” Rycroft’s cold efficiency at the helm of Tetcott was not unique. A day earlier, Lieutenant Commander John V. Wilkinson (February 14, 1914 – September 13, 1986), Captain of HMS Zetland, had received orders to investigate enemy boats sighted in the Gulf of Tunis and found 3 rafts carrying 30 Axis soldiers. The destroyer charged the small craft, and “the boats were rammed or capsized and rendered unserviceable.” Wilkinson’s report, like Rycroft’s, made no mention of survivors plucked from the sea. Conflicting evidence had been assembled by Allied intelligence, but air reconnaissance over the entire area detected no signs of evacuation, despite German radio broadcasts on May 8 stating that the African campaign was over and troops would be evacuated in small boats. At the last moment, some did manage to escape, such as W. Jüttner (1943 – after 2003), who was conveyed from the hospital to a ship about to sail. However, sunken and damaged vessels littering the harbor prevented it from putting out. So, accompanied by 12 other wounded comrades, he was rushed to El Aouina airfield, where, at 1600 hours on May 8, the last Junkers Ju-52 trimotor took off for Palermo, only minutes before the Germans blew up the airstrip. Surviving an attack by British fighters and a forced landing to repair the damage, the aircraft arrived at its destination the next day. On May 10, Virgilio, an Italian hospital ship, sailed from Korbons; on board was Hauptmann [????] Reutter (???? – ????), carrying secret reports for the Heeresgruppe Afrika War Diary. Shortly before 0900 hours, the ship was stopped by 3 British destroyers. As she was boarded, Reutter quickly destroyed all his orders and papers. Ordered back to Tunis at 1st, the ship was allowed to continue her passage to Naples later that afternoon. A few others escaped, such as the tank repair company from Panzerabteilung 501, which was pushed back to Cape Bon and took a pioneer landing boat to make its way to Sicily, without any water or provisions. 18 men suffered terrible privations, eventually drifting ashore on Sardinia, totally exhausted. Officially, only 632 officers and men were evacuated from Tunisia: about another 1,000 were rescued by the Royal Navy during the 1st 2 weeks in May from rowing and sailing boats, rubber dinghies, rafts, clinging to empty fuel drums, and even driftwood. Had there been any intention to fight to the death on the Cap Bon peninsula to cover a last-minute wholesale evacuation, 6th Armoured Division would have prevented it. Ordered to Soliman, Grombalia, and Hammamet on May 8, the division approached Hammam Lif, where a narrow defile bars the way at the only northern entrance to the Cap Bon peninsula, and Djebel el Rorouf runs down in precipitous falls to within a 1,000 yards (900 meters) of the sea. The Mediterranean Fleet savored its victory. Captain Anthony F. “Tony” Pugsley (December 7, 1901 – July 17, 1990) of the destroyer HMS Jervis whimsically reported the seizure of 96 “entrants” from the “Kelibia Regatta,” while Captain John Eaton (November 3, 1902 – July 21, 1981) of the destroyer HMS Eskimo crowed how the fleet had “strongly discouraged enemy yachtsmen.” Even Cunningham revealed his pleasure, writing, “I trust the boating activity is being firmly stopped.” Others’ appetite for vengeance went unsated. An officer of the 7th Motor Torpedo Boat Flotilla was “disappointed that the enemy did not attempt a mass evacuation.” United Kingdom Royal Navy Rear Admiral Arthur Power (April 12, 1889 – January 28, 1960) agreed. “The complete absence of any Axis men of war or shipping,” he wrote from Malta, “was very disappointing.” By May 1943, the Axis navies were wholly unable to move anything across the Strait of Sicily, neither supplying nor evacuating their soldiers and equipment stranded in Tunisia. The vengeance-seeking ships of the Mediterranean Fleet diligently hunted down even the smallest rafts and boats. As Tetcott and Zetland proved off Kelibia, nothing would pass. | |
| Image Filename | wwii0992.jpg |
| Image Size | 917.80 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 2920 x 2252 |
| Photographer | |
| Photographer Title | Office of Strategic Services |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | May 10, 1943 |
| Location | |
| City | Cape Bon |
| State or Province | Nabeul Governorate |
| Country | Tunisia |
| Archive | National Archives and Records Administration |
| Record Number | NWDNS-226-FPL-2557 |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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