GREAT BATTLE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 May 1940, Page 6

GREAT BATTLE

GERMAN VERSION OF EVENTS

CONFLICT REACHES CLIMAX. EXTENSIVE ADVANCES CLAIMED. By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright. (Received This Day, 10.35 a.m.) LONDON. May 28. A German High Command communique states: “The great battle in Flanders and Artois has reached a climax. Our keen attacks are breaking down the enemy’s grim resistance and more closely hemming in his armies. “Our forces facing the Belgian army speedily reached positions only seven miles from Bruges and Thourout, and also marched through Thielt. Confronted with a hopeless situation the Belgian army, numbering between 400,000 and 500,000 men, capitulated. “Northward of Valenciennes we made a wide breach in the French frontier fortifications. Westward of Valenciennes we crossed the Scheldt Canal and captured Orchies and Douai. “We repulsed all attacks from the westward and occupied La Bassee, Mirville, Hazebrouck and Bourbourgville.

“On the southern front in the region of the lower Somme we repulsed enemy tank attacks. “Our Air Force is strongly participating in destructive attacks. .Our planes attacked roads at Zeebrugge. Ostend and Dunkirk and destroyed railway lines, docks and ships, also a harbour bridge at Dunkirk and hit a cruiser at Calais with bombs. The enemy yesterday lost 91 planes, of which 63 were shot down in combat. Thirty-two of our planes have not returned. “British raids in Western Germany continued at random and killed a number of civilians.

The German News Agency announced that, after the reported maltreatment of German prisoners in France, Marshal Goering has ordered that all French Air Force prisoners be shackled immediately after capture and kept in separate camps and also deprived of all allowances. The order reads: “Every time the murder of a German airman is reported twenty-five captured French airmen will be shot. If German airmen are attacked while parachuting for their lives, fifty French prisoners will be shot. These measures do not apply to captured British airmen as the British have not given reason for such counter measures.”