FRENCH GUERILLAS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 March 1943, Page 4

FRENCH GUERILLAS

OPERATING AGAINST GERMANS IN MOUNTAINS SOUTH OF LAKE GENEVA VICHY ULTIMATUM DEFIED. FIRING HEARD BY SWISS. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) (Received This Day. 12.10 p.m.) LONDON, March 15. The mountainous Thonan district, south of Lake Geneva, where peasant holdings are packed between patches of heavy forest, has become the, focal point cf French resistance against the Germans and their Vichy collaborators. A Vichy ultimatum to the Thonan guerillas, demanding their surrender, expires tonight, but sporadic fighting is already reported between the guerillas and the Vichy Guard Mobile, under German officers. Swiss reports gtate that intermittent firing was heard south of Lake Geneva. Another report states that the Germans bombed the guerillas in their mountain hideouts, but that three bombers were shot down by the guerillas, who have anti-aircraft guns and machine-guns. . The “Daily Telegraph’s” Zurich correspondent says 1,000 guards have been; drafted to Thonan, a town whose normal population is 8,000. A Vichy force, which has established its headquarters at Evian, is- patrolling the whole neighbourhood with the object of cutting off the partisans’ food supplies, but this is not likely to be effective, because the population sympathises with the partisans. Most reports agree that the Guard Mobile is also sympathetic. It is impossible to foretell what might happen if they faced the prospect of heavy fighting against their own countrymen. The partisan headquarters are in the mountains near Chamonix, where they have secret radios. Their messengers, using littleknown mountain paths, sometimes cycles openly from village to village to distribute instructions.