CIRCLE OF FIRES

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 60, Issue 210, 13 June 1940, Page 5

CIRCLE OF FIRES

THE MENACE TO PARIS. GERMANS’ DESPERATE THRUST. BOMBERS’ DEADLY CARGOES. (United Press Association.—-Copyright.) (Received This Day, 12.40 p.m.) PARTS, June 12. Total darkness all night grips Paris, whose centre is deathly silent, but from the north-western fringes the sound of gun-fire is growing louder, and gun flashes burn across the sky as the German legions thrust desperately forward to the very gates of the city, which is covered by a vast blanket of heavy smoke drifting from the battlefields and burning towns and forests, which have been set on fire by a tornado of bombs and shells.

Great fires are raging in countless towns, villages and hamlets, which have become a funeral pyre for many thousands of Germans and Frenchmen who died amid the ruins. From the tops of buildings in the Champs d’Elysee a circle of fires is visible. It is impossible to sleep.. Anti-aircraft guns keep up l a continuous hammering. The houses are shuttered and deserted, restaurants closed, and Paris life dead. German bombers dropped their deadly cargoes far behind Paris. There is tlie roar and flash of explosions throughout the night. Through this curtain of terror long columns of refugees struggle on, the Germans attacking roads and railways day and night. The Royal Air Force has been considerably reinforced and, in co-opera-tion with the French, are roaring ceaselessly to the attack, taking terrific toll, but still the bombers come below them.

The French Army is making a glorious stand.