THE MAGINOT LINE

Waikato Times, Volume 124, Issue 20734, 18 February 1939, Page 9

THE MAGINOT LINE

HOME OF HUMAN MOLES WONDER OF ENGINEERING PICKED MEN NEEDED I have seen the great steel gates roll silently into place: heard the crash of bars and bolts. And the whole of the Maginot L.Vie of forts stood readv for the rudest assaults that modern war can threaten, wrote Harold unrdozo from Strasbourg to the Daily Mail in September. At points I have visited, like the Hochwald or the Zimmerhof. there are great underground fortresses stretching for many miles and buried 200 feet deep. Elsewhere, forming links in a huge steel chain, are the machine gun and artillery cupolas. In the Alps, 10,000 feet up, forts have been cut deep into the rock beneath the white of the eternal snows. From there the Line stretches northwards past Belfort to the green meadows bordering the Rhine, where every slope conceals a hidden fort. And so. along ihe narrow streams of the Lauter to the tree-topped hills of the Ardennes, pushing north past Montmedy and Stenay to the corn and blue-flowered flax Acids of the Belgian frontier. Every port, every machine gun post is so deeply buried, every approach is so skilfully hidden, that J have driven for miles along the Linp without’ seeing anything to reveal that, within a hundred yards, there exists the most powerful and complicated machinery that has ever been set up to secure a frontier from attack. Advantage of Ground I have visited fortress systems all over Europe, but never have I semi anything like this Maginot Line, which was the idea of Sergeant Maginot, who became Minister of War.

When a staff officer pointed out to me a gun position all I could see was a slight curve in the ground, and then my eye barely distinguished the form of a cupola.

Every advantage of slope and ground and camouflage had been seized on. The Maginot Line runs, almost invisible, from sea to mountain, and thence towards the sea again.

All along the 500 miles of frontier tens of thousands of French infantry and artillerymen have been swallowed up and have disappeared from sight. There they remain deep down at their allotted posts. The role the rank and file of the fortress regiments play is that of blind automatons.

Prom the time they reach their positions at machine gun and artillery posts, or beside the complicated machinery which lights and ventilates the forts and works the lifts and ammunition hoists, the men never see the sky above nor the fields around them. They are a blind army, if it came to war they would lire their bullets and shells—an unseen army—at an unseen enemy. No Embrasures There are no loopholes, no embrasures through which they can look. Every aperture is shut out by a foot and a-half of hardened steel, every gun is aimed and fired automatically. Only the observation staff of officers see what is happening above ground. The interior of the great fortresses, several of which I have been specially privileged to examine, resembles some great underground railway station, complicated by "staggered" passageways, each with its separate ward of living men and glittering guns. ’ Here and there are humming dvnomos, with red lamps flashing. Miniature electric trains carry food and ammunition from one central redoubt to the far-flung system of smaller forts. In a deep recess T found the bakeries and cookhouses, where men. stripped to the waist, were preparing meals for a garrison nf some 900 troops. Next to the command post is the telephone exchange, with its hundred odd numbers. There is no fear of severed communications. Every fort has its triple set of armoured telephone lines buried so deep and so protected that not even the biggest shell of the greatest siege gun ever constructed could reach them. A Machine Gun Post Let me take you into one of the machine gun posts. We Find it at the end of a passage with glistening concrete walls, and we pass an immense blue-painted steel door.

Somewhere the hum of electric ventilators can be heard, keeping the passages and gun positions provided with "conditioned" air at such a pressure that no outside gases can leak through. and with such suction draught that the gases from the gunbreeches are instantaneously cleared away.

Twinned or quadrupled heavy machine guns are installed. Only the mechanism of the guns is visible. The muzzles point through the stpel shields, and all would be dark but for the clear light of the electric lamps. The belts of etrtridges are automatically filled and run to the gunbreeches. The gunners have merely to keep the machinery set and swing the whole gun-block round to the angle and elevation indicated to them by telephone. In the cupolas sheltering, say. a couple of Gin quickfirers the principle is the same. The breech mechanism and the IoV-ng of the gun is all that concerns the gunners. The shells come up in a ceaseless slrcixn bv hoist from the ammunition store 50 feet or flo feet below. Each shell runs eutomaUenllv into position : the breechblocks slide to, the guns are fired, and the cartridge-cases ejected. Barbed Wire Barrier Tn front of the forts, extending to a depth of hundreds of yards, are the !"i'e:it * bulks of barbed wire and ihe immense barriers of Bin-thick steel [!i ’. efs which, with other devices, fc’-m the tank-traps. Picked troops are necessary to mm !he underground forts Despite all the lighting ventilating and heating arrangements. life is not too pleasant in these concrete tunnels and steel redoubts. Tt. is difficult to accustom men to live like moles without- a sight of the skv for days on end. If is hard to nv-re difficult to overcome the monotony of silting idle, wailing for the The French High Command has reaI'sed this. K..r the officers and VU 'Vs norma pen II ■ attached to Ihe Maginot n a cninn : al campaign. -■•me ■ •' the m osf celebrated regiments. whirh rncr formed Ihe famous Iron Division of Nancy, have been

specially selected to share In this duty of watch-and-ward on France’s eastern frontier. The forts are so dependent on mechanism that a large number of N.C.O.s and also long-service men with * knowledge of electricity and machinery, fitters and enginers, have to be employed, and they receive high rates j of pay. They also have, in normal i times, extra facilities for leave, and ! every care has been taken to instil into j Ihe minds of rank and file that they j are specially honoured units wth a i special trust.