FIRE-RAISING SABOTAGE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 November 1943, Page 4

FIRE-RAISING SABOTAGE

Incendiarism is one more arm of resistance in France. Forest fires are increasing. They have to be fought by troops. Recently at one place in the south of France 400 German soldiers had to fight fires to save their camp. “L’Alerte,” a French paper, published by Vichy-German collaborationists, declared: “The firing of forests in the south of France has spread according to a concerted plan, and it is increasingly likely that the fires are part of a series of terrorist activities.” The same paper complains of the “shameful slackness” of the public powers, which means in reality connivance on the part of the local gendarmes, who rarely hasten to take any action that might benefit the Germans in occupation. Fires are easily started. A long piece of string hanging from the branch of a tree carries a stone to which matches have been firmly bound, their heads resting on the smooth surface of a flat stone placed on the ground. The fire raiser can be far away before the breeze causes the matches scraping on the stone to ignite. A thin wisp of smoke that grows into a column, or a faint glow at night that spreads into a mantle of fire racing up the hillside among the pines, tells the German sen-: tinels that resistance in France is very much alive.