GERMANS USING HEAVY GUNS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 September 1939, Page 5

GERMANS USING HEAVY GUNS

Effort to Stem French Onset THREAT TO IMPORTANT POSITIONS PENETRATION OF TERRITORY ADMITTED (Received This Day, 9.5 a.m.) PARIS, September 14. A communique revealing' that heavy German artillery is in action on heights south of Saarbrucken is interpreted to mean that .the enemy has been forced to bring up big guns to offset the French threat to important positions. A New York message quotes an American press Paris correspondent as saying that German reinforcements are massing behind Saarbrucken in order to avert its capture. It is reported that French planes are busy bombing the heavy German artillery which is being rushed to the Saar Valley to stem the French advance. Authoritative quarters are of opinion that the Germans have brought up the heavy guns in the belief that the French operations are merging from the stage of an advance guard action and are threatening important positions in the Siegfried Line. - A German communique admits that: “Stronger French forces than hitherto” have penetrated German territory bebetween Saarbrucken and Hornbach. It added that the French advance had been stopped by gunfire and minefields. A Daventry broadcast states that the French report that local advances continue, in the course of which some prisoners were taken. The advance has reached the advanced positions of the Siegfried Line near Saarbrucken. French troops are on German soil on a ninety-mile front from Moselle to the Rhine. The Germans have suffered heavier air losses than the French.