APPALLING STORIES

Waikato Times, Volume 125, Issue 20915, 21 September 1939, Page 7

APPALLING STORIES

STREAM OF REFUGEES NAZI RUTHLESSNESS REGRETTABLE HAGGLING (United Tress Assn.—Elec. Tel Copyright) (Received Sept. 21, 2.45 p.m.) LONDON, Sept. 20

The Bucharest correspondent of the Times says a procession of refugees twenty miles long is pouring through Cernauti. The Polish soldiers piled up and destroyed every form of war material likely to be useful to the Germans.

The refugees tell appalling tales of bombing of open towns.

Eye-witnesses of the bombing of Krzemieniec state the- market place was clearly distinguishable. It was thronged with peasants and villages who waved to planes bearing Polish marking, only to find they really were German, whose pilots machine-gunned them mercilessly. The Poles believe that Britain and France abandoned them, and when the truth was told they asked despairingly “then why was Germany not bombed.”

The saddest complaint is that a shipment of 100 of the most modern fighters and a large quantity of bombs was due to be despatched from London by a steamer arriving at Gdynia on August 25, when someone discovered it would cost £4OOO less if they were sent by another route. Argument and haggling followed and as a result the shipment never left London, and the Poles were without fighters to combat German bombers. This largely contributed to t-he Polish debacle.