STERN FIGHTING

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20045, 18 September 1939, Page 7

STERN FIGHTING

POLISH STAND LAND AND AIR BATTLES NAZIS CAUSE CARNAGE ADVANCE BY INVADERS SEVERE TOLL TAKEN (Elec. Tot. Copyright—United Press Assn.) (Reed. Sept. 18. 9 a.m.) LONDON, Sept. 10. A communique issued by the Polish Supreme Command states that the troops to-day were successfully holding the Germans on all fronts.

The Vilno radio station reports that 18 German planes dropped 200 bombs, causing shock and carnage in the centre of the city. The death roli is immense, the victims being mainly women and children.

Polish dispatches say that German planes continue to attack defenceless refugee trains and Red Cross columns, swooping low and massacring civilians with bombs and machineguns. The Polish radio station announced that Polish planes attacked and destroyed a German air base at Poznan from which raiders have been bombing Warsaw, and it is claimed that 30 planes were wiped out. According to a Warsaw broadcast, the Poles are still fiercely resisting in the Hel Peninsula and also in the vicinity of Gdynia. The defence of Warsaw is continuing strongly. German attacks from the north and east so far have been stemmed. The Germans are meeting with stubborn resistance in their drive in the direction of Bialystok which is 125 miles north-east of Warsaw and Brest-Litovsk. The situation in this sector is stated to have been virtually unchanged for two whole days It is claimed that the Poles inflicted heavy losses on the Germans 45 miles south-west of Warsaw. A German wireless broadcast declares -that the Polish President M. Moscicki and some Government officials and the British and French Embassies have gone to a frontier town. “This town so far has not been bombed because it is close to Rumania,’’ the broadcast stated.