During these events, in the north, under the constant pressure of the American 2nd Corps, the enemy had stalled on the night of May 2 to 3 and, the next day, the 1st D.B.U.S. had occupied Mateur. The Germans had then tried to hold the heights between Tébourba and the east of Mateur, momentarily stopping the right wing of the American corps, while the left wing (1st and 2nd D.I.U.S., corps franc d'Afrique, 2nd group of tabors Moroccans and a battalion of French marines) continued its march towards Bizerte, on either side of Lake Ichkeul.
But the Germans who were still resisting were very weak. On May 7, they ceased all resistance and, around 4 p.m., the lead tanks of the American 1st D.B. entered Bizerte, followed immediately by a French jeep carrying Colonel Bouley and Captain Larroque, itself preceding a company of this valiant African Free Corps commanded at that time by Colonel Magnan.
The same day, at the same time, the two major sea and air ports, which had been the real stakes of the Tunisian campaign, were liberated, Tunis by the English, Bizerte by the Americans and the French.
this fact, writes Marshal Alexander in his Memoirs, was a happy coincidence. I was naturally behind this division of efforts, but I did not expect such a calculated outcome!
The German high command waited until the next day, May 8, to declare by radio that North Africa, which, decidedly, no longer presented any interest, was going to be abandoned and that "the 30,000 Germans and 31,000 Italians who still remained there would be evacuated by sea.
Only a few German planes were able to break through the air blockade, bringing along a few leaders and specialists necessary for the continuation of the war in Europe, French "collaborators" and Admiral Esteva himself, forcibly removed. Some small boats also managed, at night, to pass through the surveillance net of the Allied warships. It seems that a maximum of 1,500 to 2,000 men were able to escape in this way. out of a total, not 61,000, as German radio said, but nearly 150,000.
During the April-May blockade, 147 transport planes and 31 ships of the Axis had been destroyed. The “trapdoor” was hopeless.
After the capture of Tunis and Bizerte, what had become of the Axis field forces? The group, by far the smallest, which was north of Tunis, was surrounded between the 2nd American Corps, at Bizerte, and the 7th British Armored Division, which had advanced on the 8th to the lower Medjerda and held the bridge of Protville. He surrendered unconditionally to the US 2nd Corps on May 9.
But the greater part of the German-Italian troops still held, that is to say the elements which had been able to escape from Tunis and flow back towards the south, the entire army of General Messe, which faced south against the British Army City, and the units of the Afrika Korps who were still defending themselves against the French in the Zaghouan massif, an almost impregnable citadel.
It was therefore now a matter of quickly executing the drawdown maneuver to the south provided for by the "Vulcain" plan, in order to successively achieve the following goals:
I) Block the base of the Cap Bon peninsula, which our allies feared much that the enemy did not make a refuge.
2) To crush against the solid "anvil" of the VII army the main body of the Messe army which faced it and the elements withdrawn from Tunis.
3) Widely encircle the defenders of Zaghouan by the coastal road.
May 8 at m At the end, the 6th British D.B. therefore pivots towards the south by the coast road. At Hammam-Lif, residence of the Bey of Tunis, 15 kilometers from the capital, the road takes a narrow gully a few hundred meters wide between the steep slopes of Djebelbou-Kournine and the sea. In this defile, the remnants of the division "Hermann Goering" had entrenched themselves firmly, supported by the guns of 88 anti-aircraft withdrawn from the airfields.
For two days, they held the British in check before this narrows, which was about almost impossible to overflow. Finally, on the morning of the 10th, after a night advance of the English infantry in the rocks on the side of the Jebel, a few tanks succeeded in slipping onto the beach, behind the 88 guns which they attacked from the rear, and the resistance fell.
On the evening of May 10, the 6th D.B. reached Hammamet, locking the base of Cap Bon, which was cleared the next day by the 4th D.I., which found no significant troops there. .