AT A STANDSTILL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 October 1939, Page 7

AT A STANDSTILL

GERMANY’S WESTERN FRONT ASSAULT Losses Out of All Proportion to Gains ATTACKING TROOPS STOPPED BY WALL OF FIRE ENTRENCHING LN EXPOSED POSITIONS (By Telegraph.—Press Association. —Copyright.) LONDON. October 18. Germany’s push, inspired by Herr Hitler’s desire to eject the French from German soil, is now at a complete standstill. It is unofficially estimated that German losses since Monday are at least 5000, which is out of all proportion to the slight gains. French losses in the course of a well-planned retirement to prearranged positions were slight. Once the Germans reached the first real line of French defences they met a veritable wall of fire which abruptly halted the attackers. A semi-official commentary says the Germans at no point succeeded in getting near enough to the French defences to enable hand-grenade fighting. They wore forced to dig in-at points where they gained a foothold with a view to establishing machine-gun nests, and will be constantly exposed to a violent French artillery barrage and machine-gun fire. The “New York Times’’ military correspondent, Mr Archambault, in a message from Paris says that, launching more than 100.000 men in a long-awaited large-scale attack, the Germans advanced yesterday evening on a 20-mile front beyond the thin line of French outposts, only to be halted by deadly inter-locking fire from the main line of resistance on which the bulk of the French force had been withdrawn a. fortnight ago. The German losses are reported to have been heavy since the nature of the ground and the conditions of operation precluded the use of tanks and the support of infantry. The French claim that except at one or two points they continue to occupy German territory. The attack came in the Saarbrucken-Zweibrucken-Pirmasens sector and was the second assault of the day. the first having been decisively repulsed.