RETREAT TO COAST

Manawatu Standard, Volume LX, Issue 155, 31 May 1940, Page 7

RETREAT TO COAST

SKILFUL ALLIED MANOEUVRE " SOME FORCES EMBARK GREAT GERMAN PRESSURE [(United Press Association—By Electric Telegraph— Copyright.) Received May 31, 10.5 a.m. LONDON, May 31. An official announcement says the B.E.F. and the French in the north have been forced to fall back towards the coast in view of the increased German pressure on the northern and southern flanks in the battle,now raging. The operation has been carried out with great skill and daring, and the troops not immediately engaged have been evacuated with the assistance of the Royal Navy. - This operation is proceeding successfully, and numbers of troops have already reached England. The Royal, Air Force, screening the withdrawal and evacuation, constantly engaged the enemy, and over seventy German ’planes were destroyed and many damaged on this front yesterday. British troops are operating with the French in the sector southward of the Somme. In Paris the Belgian spokesman said seven groups of Belgian troops were still fighting alongside the Allies in Flanders. Several high officers had refused King Leopold’s order to lay down their arms. FORTY GERMAN DIVISIONS. The French military spokesman says the Germans, in violent northern fighting yesterday, threw in the full weight of forty divisions, supported by the bulk of their mechanised forces. The Germans captured Mount Cassel, two miles from Cassel, where the French are bitterly contesting the furious German drive to the Channel. A French communique states that there is nothing new on the Somme or the rest of the front. AMIENS WIPED OUT. The British United ..Press Paris correspondent says waves of warplanes bombed Amiens and are reported to have wiped out the city, systematically killing the inhabitants, including women and children, as they streamed , out along the roads. Other sources indicate that the bombing of Amiens occurred last week.