BOGUS RELEASE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 April 1943, Page 4

BOGUS RELEASE

OF FRENCH SOLDIERS. GERMAN PRESS GANG METHODS. The happiness of thousands of French soldiers on their return to their homes when the French army in the unoccupied zone was disbanded, at the time the Germans, marched south across the demarcation line, was shortlived. Returning soldiers were faced with stringent regulations. They had to fill out a form, either at any town in which they stopped on the way home or when they reached their destination, within 24 hours. The form asked for the fullest particulars not only of age, regiment in which the soldier had served, but of the soldier’s trade or other employment before joining the army. Hardly had the forms been deposited at the local town hall than the demobilised soldier received another form calling on him to report at once for “voluntary” service in a German munitions factory, if he was used to factory work, or for employment in agriculture, of course for Germany. Many Frenchmen demobilised did not fill up the forms but made straight for the hills and mountains,' where they may yet cause considerable trouble for the Germans. France thus is being turned into a land of slavery for Germany, while Vichy, acquiescing in every Nazi exaction and calling upon Frenchmen in the name of “patriotism” to go and work in Germany, is daily growing more execrated. Laval, the new Gauleiter of France, comes in for his share of hatred, and the myth of the fatherly marshal doing his best for his country has long since been exploded.