EVACUATION BY THE CZECHS WATCHED SILENTLY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 3 October 1938, Page 5

EVACUATION BY THE CZECHS WATCHED SILENTLY

German Troops Cross Frontiers at Dawn

WIDELY ACCLAIMED BY POPULATION

By Telegraph.—Press Association.—Copyright.

LONDON, October 2. ■ Reuters’ correspondent at Asch says that the CzechGerman frontier evacuation hour was heralded in at 1 a.m. with a burst of machine-gun and rifle fire, while Verey lights illuminated the surrounding country. The Czechs began the evacuation overnight of part of Sudetenland and also south-western Bohemia. It is officially announced from Berlin that German troops crossed the frontier between Helfenberg and Finsterau. At 2 a.m. the Czechs evacuated Eger. The first German troops to cross the frontier were commanded by General Ritter Von. Leeb. A message from Regensburg says that troops of Germany’s new army, wearing flowers in their helmets and buttonholes, stood by in the cold, foggy dawn awaiting the order at 2 a.m. to march. Roads to Passau were crowded with traffic. The Sudeten free corps had the strictest orders not to move to the Sudetenland. Czech and German forces agreed to remain 1500 metres on either side of a line marking the area occupied today running roughly from the frontier to Warmemoldau, only a third of Zone one.

Czech troops have completely evacuated the first zone. They were watched by a silent population. Immediately the last soldier left Swastika flags were run up everywhere. The British United Press correspondent at Waldhausel, describing the beginning of the German occupation, reports that armoured cars headed an advancing column followed by lorries carrying mechanised infantry, anti-aircraft guns and much other modern equipment. Thus the first zone of Sudetenland, sixty miles long by eighteen miles deep at its widest section, became part of the Reich. A small group of Sudeten’s at the frontier had built a triumphal arch of evergreens, through which the troops passed and were received with rhythmic “Hells” and pelted with swastika flowers. Meanwhile Sudetens further in the interior were busy dismantling tree trunk barricades which had been erected by the Czechs and hurling them into ditches.

Later the triumphal march continued through villages decorated with flags and festoons. Herr Hitler’s portrait was displayed in the shop windows. The Nazi labour corps followed troops in order to clear the roads. In one case they had to dynamite a Czech anti-tank barrier formed of railways lines embedded in concrete.