From Tunisia to Tunica

Some 80 years ago today, the North African Campaign wrapped up. The week prior, the British 7th Armored Division captured Tunis, the capital of Tunisia while the U.S. II Army Corps captured Bizerte, the last remaining port in Axis hands. On 13 May 1943, the Axis forces in North Africa, having sustained 40,000 casualties in the loss of Tunisia alone, surrendered and 267,000 German and Italian soldiers became prisoners of war.

The later famous if somewhat overrated Deutsches Afrikakorps (DAK), had, once Rommel left, been sort of renamed to Heeresgruppe Afrika and left for Generaloberst Hans-Jürgen Bernard Theodor von Arnim to surrender into captivity.

The haul of military gear was tremendous and the Allies came away with many working examples of just about every juicy piece of kit both the Germans and Italians had in the field at the time.

The below chronicled by LIFE magazine’s Eliot Elisofon:

As for…