WITH BARE FISTS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 September 1941, Page 6

WITH BARE FISTS

HOW CZECHS ARE FIGHTING ACTS OF SABOTAGE. SECRET ORGANISATIONS BUSY. The night is really a valuable ally in the stubborn and unceasing underground struggle between the Czech people and their German oppressors. The Czechs are fighting with their bare fists. It is a warfare calling for special weapons, and the Czechs have been extremely clever and thorough in their discovery and use. Acts of sabotage arc committed under cover of darkness, wherever' that element can be of aid in the commission of such acts. The commonest attacks are against the railways which have become an especially favourite object of sabotage since the Nazis began moving large bodies of troops into the Balkans. These troop movements through the “Protectorate"—in both directions—are now a routine matter, while fresh contingents have also been despatched to the new GermanRussian frontier. Secret organisations in Bohemia and Moravia are very well informed as to the movement of transports when trains will be passing certain points, and whence and whither they are bound. Hence the many accidents on the Czech railways. Quite recently there was a collision near Opava between a troop and an express train. Two days later another troop-train came into collision with a workmen’s train at Plan, in western Bohemia. At the end of January a train full of soldiers was derailed at Suchdol (Bohemia, .because of an impaired track. A similar accident occurred near Tabor (southern Bohemia). Here the derailed train destroyed a signal box and killed the signalman. All these accidents resulted in serious loss of life and interrupted traffic for some days. Not far from Ceske Budejovice a train load of German tanks was stopped one night by means of false sema- ■' phore signals. The train was kept? standing a long time on the permanent way? Meanwhile the Germans accompanying the transport alighted from the trucks to stretch their legs. In their absence, unknown persons made use of the darkness to cut the wires in the tanks, the engines of which were thus put out of action. Although the entire station staff at Budejovice was closely questioned, the perpetrators were never discovered. Similar acts of sabotage by night have been committed against electricity works which supply current to important German military plants. At the Skoda Works, these acts were so numerous that the German military authorities were at last compelled to instal a regular system of nightwatching, with sentry-posts and machine guns. As in Belgium, Holland, and Norway, German soldiers are afraid to walk in the streets of the smaller towns or in the suburbs of Prague, by night. Not that there are canals in Prague and other Czech towns into which German soldiers can be pushed, as they are in Holland and Belgium. Nevertheless, darkness is the ally of men whose only weapons against machine-guns, tanks, and the great might of the German army are fists, sticks, knives, and, occasionally, revolvers, though the latter are rarely used, for their use is accompanied by too much noise. Unaccompanied German soldiers are set upon, as part of this unrelenting warfare against the hated tyrant, and are seriously injured or even killed. In some parts, things have become so bad that the military authorities have suspended the issuance of late passes to soldiers and have ordered troops to walk about in groups after dark. The anti-Nazi organisations in the “Protectorate” work secretly and in the dark. Covertly and concealed by the darkness, a fierce and deadly fight is going on all the time. It is a war which knows no pity for the victim. At night and especially towards early morning, the spies of the Gestapo carry out their lightning raids and housesearches, knowing that their victims are most likely to be at home at four or five o’clock in the morning. At night, too, arrested men are locked in jails and thrown into Gestapo cells; at / night they are submitted to crossexamination and torture. Lorries carrying the bodies of those who have succumbed to torture and ill-treatment leave police headquarters for the crematory by night. At night, too. men are transported, alive or half-dead, to the German concentration camps. Night-time in Prague, night-time in the “Protectorate.” night-time all over Europe is a cruel and pitiless time, echoing to the cries of the tormented, a time, too, when even the tormentors shake with fear. For through these nights, there now gleams the hope of a British victory/