IN HITLER’S WAY

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20129, 26 December 1939, Page 8

IN HITLER’S WAY

TWO MAIN OBSTACLES BRITISH FLEET THE MAGINOT LINE FORTS DESCRIBED ME.TZ. Nov. 20. Two things stand firmly in HenHitler’s way. The first is the Maginot Line and the second is the British Fleet. The Maginot Line is a chain of fortresses stretching across the northern frontier of France. They are situated so that every square yard of the defended belt witlhin the frontier is covered by the -fire of anti-tank guns, field guns, and machine-guns. In front of the whole line and round each fort stretch anti-tank obstacles of many kinds. In some places they are moats, as deep and steep-sided as a bear pit in a zoo. In some places the country has 'been artificially flooded. • Anti-Tank Devices Everywhere there is a considerable line of obstacles—first a fence of steel rails embedded in the ground, then a fence of heavy round-topped steel posts set -at varying heights, so that an attacking tank will slither and topple among them, and finally a special device which will explode a mine as ibig as a shell from a heavy gun as soon as a tank hits it. Every point in the anti-tank fences is enfiladed by anti-tank guns, the heaviest of which c'an, at a pinch, fire 35 shells a minute.

A special correspondent writes: I spent a day looking at a section of the line lying eastward of Metz. There was a little artillery activity. Otherwise all was quiiet. The firing of heavy guns could be heard now and then, like the beating of distant drums. A group of planes appeared overhead, flying very high. The gunfire became more rapid. For a time shells burst above the clouds in which the enemy reconnaissance planes sheltered. They could not be seen from the ground. Behind the line of Maginot fortresses, and the heavy and field artillery 'that support them, shepherds were driving their sheep over lully paddocks. In No-Man’s-Land In front of the Mlagin’ot Line are light troop's with field artillery, able to withdraw if the High Command desires it over any kind of country. It is these field troops who have been fighting in the wide no-man’s-land between the Siegfried and Maginot Lines. Behind them, set in the steep-sided wooded hills that overlook the German frontier are the Magindt forts. These forts are designed to meet three things—first, a tank attack; second, a sustained bombardment wiith heavy artillery; and third the unlikely possibility that the attacker will manage to thrust a way through the gap between the forts and temporarily isolate them. To meet the second threat, the fonts are tunnelled so deeply that in many places there is more than 100 ft. of earth and concrete above the garrison and its stores of food and ammunition, power houses, and dormitories. To meet the third threat, the garrisons are able to 9hut the three-ton steel doors of the fortresses and Stand a long siege. A visitor Walking through one of the larger forts from the front, where most of the guns are, to the back door on the other side of the hill, must tramp for more than a mile along arched and concrdfced tunnels, about 12ft. in height, and wide enough to allow pedestrians and cyclists to stand aside While a small electric tram goes clat'teifing iby. rihere are rack’s for bicycles 100 ft. below the ground, so that the mten ol tlhe garrison can hurry to their DOsts if the alarm is given. j Power-liouses In Forts

There is a power house about 150 feet in length, making the power to operate the aft?, tramways, kitchens, revolving gun turrets, searchlights, telephone system, and air purifying plant, which makes the forts proof against all known poison gases. Homemade electricity also operates the overhead railway along which crates of shells are carried from the deep ammunition stores, where they are stacked like hooks in a library, to the gun turrets themselves. On the surface there is not much to see unless the visitor stands close enough to the camouflaged mushroomlike gun cupolas to ofoserve them. One of them houses two machine-guns and two anti-tank guns. Another has two eyes through which can be seen the muzzles of guns that could shoot far into Germany.

On the slippery mud of the slopes covering one ol the forts, French soldiers were kicking a football. They stopped the game to peer up at the sky,* to follow tih-e flight of a reconnaissance plane far overhead. On the top of another fort a group of- British soldiers technicians were doing special work in aircraflt observation. At one 9t'age there was a group of ibetween 30 and 40 British and American press correspondents and British officers standing on top of a fort. They had streamed across France in a long convoy of foreign cars that made some of the villagers exclaim: “Here are the British,” and others, “Look at the Poles.”

A French officel was asked whether German observers could see us. “Yes,” he said. “Wiill they fire?” he was asked. “No,” he replied. “Do the Germans stand in crowds on top of hills lyce this, where you can see them?” “No,” said the French officer. “Why?” “Because they know we would shoot at them.”