FRENCH REMEMBER

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 2, Issue 121, 9 February 1940, Page 2

FRENCH REMEMBER

AN ANECDOTE FROM BEHIND

THE WESTERN FRONT LINES

The Frenchman at my side looked reflectively at the polish on his tirmy riding boots. 1 will tell you why in a moment. 1 was gazing at the polish of the panorama itself. For once it wasn't ruining, and the sky was brilliantly blue ,writes Godfrey Winn of the Daily Telegraph, from the Wester.l Front). Moreover, we were standing in out, of the most beautiful squares in the world, in a town not far behind the Maginot Line. The square was great wrought gates, framed in gold, and all the facades of the houses are united b> a gold leaf pattern in-peace time brings travellers from far and wide. Now we are at war. Now in the sky there are three tiny specks, crossing at intervals, and I become conscious that thc3 r are enemy planes, because the blue is suddenly broken up by little clouds of puffy white smoke. My companion, because it happens to be one side of his particular job, knows what is their mission, there in the heavens, on this winter's morning that is unexpectedly like the summer. He knows that they are dropping pamphlets, and what are Ihe contents.

There are four pictures in each ol these -pamphlets, which are designed simply for one purpose, and that is to try to separate the French from the British. What a hope!

The pictures represent a French soldier and an Englishman, meeting, making friends, walking away, arm in arm together. And then suddenly they are surprised by the enemy. The Frenchman falls in a river of blood, and you see the Englishman, unscathed, retreating away from his ally, without a backward glance.

Can you beat that for unconvincing crudity?

The French commandant at my side I have already told you, was staring down a I the toe of one of his boots. Now I will explain why. It wasn't for the shine, for he had just said to mc; "You see that dent? I received it as a memento from the Germans in the last war. Nothing spectacular happened, you understand ... it was simply that I got my feet caught in some of their barbed wire. "But in the 20 years of peace that there have been, every time I went riding in the Bois I wore these boots and saw that dent, and remembered. . . . and if you remember such a tiny thing . . . what about the rest

. . . how could any of lis forget? They must be crazy if they imagine we have such short memories of how our men and your men stood shoulder to shoulder when the order went forth: 'They shall not pass'.'" He paused for a moment, and then he added quietly: "You understand, it was barbed wire entanglements they had put up on our soil to try to keep us from recapturing our own country."