ON THE WESTERN FRONT

Waikato Times, Volume 125, Issue 20914, 20 September 1939, Page 8

ON THE WESTERN FRONT

ADVANCE OF FRENCH TROOPS WITHIN THE WEST WALL OUTWORKS ARTILLERY ACTIVE PRELUDE TO A “BIG NOISE” (United Press Assn.—Elec. Tel. Copyright) NEW YORK, Sept. 19 On that part of the Western Front where it is considered the Germans cannot afford to lose much ground —that is to say, the central sector, facing Saarlautern and Zweibrucken —the artillery on both sides continues active, writes the Paris correspondent of the New York Times. The remainder of the front has been quiet for 24 hours. “Quiet” is frequently the prelude to a “big noise.” The French have progressed an average distance of 12 miles from the Maginot Line on a front 15 miles wide. The consequences of this are twofold. First, the section of the Maginot Line is now out of range of all except the heaviest guns. Second, the French first line troops are actually within the West Wall outworks. A message from Basle, Switzerland, states that the arrival of guns and equipment from the Polish front is assisting the Germans, whose intense artillery fire has transformed Perl into a no-man"s-land. This bears out the belief that the Germans withdrew from their advanced posts to enable their heavy artillery to bombard the French attackers. Activity has increased along the front, including the new forest-clad sector south of Saarbrucken. The Germans are reported to have dynamited patches one hundred yards wide in the forest to enable their machine-guns to operate without obstruction. The Polish position is not likely to prevent the Germans from transferring more troops to the Western Front. It is estimated that the German troops in the field at the outbreak of war comprised 135 divisions. Seventy of these, on the basis of Marshal Goering’s statement, were in Poland. More divisions have been mobilised in Germany since then.