ENEMY TROOPS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 January 1942, Page 3

ENEMY TROOPS

MASSED IN WESTERN EUROPE FROM NORWAY SOUTHWARD. TALK ALSO OF NEW THRUST IN MEDITERRANEAN. (By Telegraph—Press Association— Copyright) LONDON, January 3. The Stockholm correspondent of the Exchange Telegraph agency quotes a Rome correspondent as saying that the next Axis thrust is expected to take place in the Mediterranean. The British United Press correspondent in Stockholm says that according to reliable reports big German military measures are proceeding in Norway, Denmark, Holland, Belgium and France. Strong air reinforcements, including troop-carriers, arrived in these countries in the .latter half of December.

The garrisons in the larger places in Norway have .been reinforced by picked troops, including parachutists, and also amphibious and other tanks. The submarine base at Trondheim has been completed. It is reported to have bombproof docks, and it can accommodate a dozen U-boats.

A big air base 60 miles from Oslo consists' of five runways, each one and a quarter miles long, and it has bombproof underground hangars. Thousands of Norwegian coastal inhabitants have been ordered to find homes elsewhere.

It is reported from Oslo that the British raid at Vaasgo has resulted in riots in “ay western Norway,” says the Stockholm correspondent of the Associated Press of Great Britain. German troops were forced to protect the quislings, and several hundred demonstrators were arrested. The inhabitants of a village near where the British landed have been heavily fined because the German telegraph cables have been cut in 35 places. It is disclosed in London that nearly 300 Norwegians returned to Britain with the Lofoten raiders.