AUSTRALIAN WAS IN MAGINOT LINE

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 2, Issue 110, 15 January 1940, Page 7

AUSTRALIAN WAS IN MAGINOT LINE

GENERAL TELLS OF VISIT

TO WESTERN FRONT

The first Australian soldier U> return from the Western Front, the Deputy Chief of the General Stafl (Lieutenant-General J. Northcott) told of the vast military effort of France and Britain in the first three months of the war. As military adviser to the Austra-

lian delegation to the Dominion War Conference, Lieutenant-Gen-eral Northcott surveyed the German front line from a French advance post the same evening as he heard a German propaganda. broadcast from Stuttgart gibing at the delegation as being too busy wining and dining behind the lines to see what was happening. "1 was lefv' he said, "with the "Hilslanding impression that both in France and England confidence is growing in the strength and invincibility of the Allies.

'The time gained to complete our organisation and consolidate our pre partitions has'proved more valuable everj* day and we face the future with more and more optimism, Asa result of the Dominion's Conferences the fighting services have attained a complete understanding, on arrangements for co-operation by every part of the Empire in the prosecution of the war,' If Line "Broken" "1 was tremendously impressed by the strength of the Maginot Line, With the calibre of the French officers and men, and by their belief that the line cannot be smashed.

"Of course, any line can be "broken" if the enemy cares to attack regardless of casualties, but every part of it is a self-contained fortress,and masses of troops could be brought forward rapidly to deai With German forces that were penetrating at one point.

"No 'one can predict whether the German High Command will launch a major offensive next spring. The French had fully expected a German push through Holland and Belgium •>n November 2;1, but it had not materialised for reasons best known to Hitler.

"The French had erected subsidiary defences behind and in front of the Maginot Line. Artillery activity on both sides had been confined to the shelling of advance posts and patrols, rather than any bombardment of the main fortifications. Outstanding Impressions. "While the Germans lacked any senior officers who had seen active service in the last war because of Nazi purges, the French personnel was first-class.

"With the efficiency of the elite .Maginot fortress troops were many typically. French touches, such as

pigs ancl fowls penned alongside gun emplacements. They were the property of poilus who owned the adjacent farms.'*

Behind the French and British lines, Lieut-General Northcott saw new marvels of mechanised warfare, the secret potential ities' of which could not even be hinted at.

Other outstanding impression?", however, were the elation of the R.A.F. squadrons, which were confident that they had the best of (3erma.n fighters and bombers, the ineffectiveness of German propaganda, despite its intensity and novelty of form, the Pine physique of British trainees called up under con scription, the immense relief of returning to Australia with its absence of Avar atmosphere, and the knowledge that you can go out at night "without tripping over sandbags in a black-out."