ENEMY TACTICS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 27 May 1940, Page 5

ENEMY TACTICS

DESCRIBED BY BRITISH WOUNDED CHILDREN MACHINE-GUNNED . BY GERMANS. PARACHUTISTS DRESSED AS WOMEN. LONDON, May 25. Hand-to-hand fighting in Belgium, parachutists dressed as women, and 'ruthless attacks on children are subjects vividly described by wounded members of the British Expeditionary Force on their arrival in England as stretcher cases. Here are typical stories: A Newcastle man who sufferea a bayonet wound, in the knee at Louvain, Belgium (where the British heavily repulsed a German attack on May 15) said: “It was hot enough with German parachuters coming down all round carrying tommy guns and doing a lot of sniping. The best part was to see the Germans running away.

“We were bombed from one hospital to another for a fortnight,” he added. “Before I reached the ship I saw the wreckage of a hospital train which the Germans had bombed to pieces. It made my blood boil to see German planes diving on ruined Belgian villages, machine-gunning the ..terrified children who ran screaming for shelter.”

A Surrey man said: “It was pretty tough with the main enemy in front and parachutists coming down from the clouds behind. We turned our Bren gun on one cluster and a score of Germans were dead before they reached the ground. At least a dozen were dressed as women. They used tommy guns against everyone in sight.” MILITARY REGISTRATIONS OVER TWO MILLION IN BRITAIN. (British Official Wireless.) LONDON. May 25. The Ministry of Labour and National Service announced that the provisional figures of men in the 27 age group who registered for national service today were 326,259, of whom 3439 were provisionally registered conscientious objectors. The former total is the "largest so far registered in one day. and brings the total under the groups registered to more than 2.000,000. There once again has been a decrease in the proportion registering as conscientious objectors today, the figures being 1.05 per cent of the total registering.