As far as I can make out, TIME Correspondent Will Lang and four companions (a French reporter, an American newscaster and two English soldiers) were the first men in United Nations uniform to reach the center of Tunis.

By mistake they drove right in far ahead of the British First Army (which was still mopping up in the suburbs), pulled up as big as life at Nazi headquarters in the Majestic Hotel before the last Germans had cleared out. There weren't any Allied troops within three or four miles, but so many natives and Frenchmen turned out to cheer Lang and his friends that the Nazis inside scrammed out the back door to the garage and made their getaway after planting grenades in the motors of all the cars they were not using for their escape.

"We had a real victory dinner of roast beef, carrots and plenty of good red wine that night while rifle and machine gun fire was still crackling up and down the dark streets outside," Lang cabled, "and then we three correspondents slept in the Majestic--the only Allied garrison in Tunis."

This was the second African stronghold one of our TIME & LIFE News Bureau men stumbled into ahead of the Army. Two years ago (eight months before Pearl Harbor) George Rodger strolled out the causeway to Massaua, the last seaport held by the Italians in Eritrea, was escorted to the Italian general's headquarters, found to his amazement that the Italians were still looking for someone to surrender to. He had dinner that night with the Italian commander, was on the friendliest of terms with the vanquished before the surrender ceremonies next day.

Will Lang's entry into Tunis was not quite so peaceful. The roads were strewn with wrecks of cars and tanks, clouds of dust and cordite hung in the air. Five Germans tried to give themselves up to Lang's party, and there was an Axis officer who had just seen his brother shot in the stomach for suggesting surrender. Later two cars flashed past 60 miles an hour, the second firing at the first and someone in the first car shouting his head off.

"At one point the road was clogged with one solid chain of British armor," Lang reports. "The tanks were halted because some bitter fighting was still going on near the intersection ahead, and we could ear the chilling chatter of machine guns, cautioning us that Tunis was not yet won. We bypassed the tanks and bumped onward over the roadside trolley line, passing villas licking flames into the sky.

"By the time we reached the disputed intersection, 400 surrendered Germans were being shepherded from the grounds of the Bey of Tunis' palace. There was rifle fire going on behind smoke clouds as some fanatical Germans still sniped at tanks.

"We hurried past and entered the Tunis native quarter where the Arabs stood sullenly and watched our car go by. In the Jewish quarter the civilians cheered 'Vive la France!' and stopped us several times with the wall of flesh their bodies formed. An old man unfurled a picture of Roosevelt and shouted 'Vive Roosevelt!' They swarmed all over the car as we edged toward the center of town, and when we stopped before the Hotel Majestic there was almost a mob scene."

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