MAGINOT OUTPOST

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 60, Issue 211, 14 June 1940, Page 8

MAGINOT OUTPOST

IMPRESSIONS OF A VISITOR. PICTURESQUE VARIETY. There is always a fresh interest in paying visits to the outposts. The great forts of the Maginot Line are lacking in this picturesque variety. Each of 1 hem, no doubt, has its individual character for the garrison, but the casual visitor perceives little more than that one is bigger than another, writes Richard Capell, correspondent, of the “Sunday Times” following an inspection made in April. The outposts seem to belong to a different world. By comparison with the Maginot forts, where one lias a feeling of mankind in servitude to machinery, the little posts appear almost improvised. No two are alike. What lies to hand is made use of.

It is no everyday privilege to be invited by a battalion to a tour of its outposts. You appreciate it all the more when the commanding officer turns out'an armed escort to sec you safe across the more or less open ground which occurs here and there; [for, as everyone has beenxtold, certain posts arc in virtual isolation. 1 Out in the'Wilds. You feet yourself out in the wilds. The wood we are going through is known to be explored from time to time by inquisitive Germans and this lends special interest to any movement detected among the trees. • We do detect a movement and everyone is on the qui vive. Is that a German or some other animal yonder ? The animal turns out to be a black and white dog, and the question then is whether it is enemy or friendly. The officer in charge of the party goes off to get within .convenient range., for dogs scouting for the enemy are shot. But the officer does not shoot. The dog proves by its manner that it is not war-trained but only a nervous stray. And we push on. A bit of a trench, well camouflaged leads us to the little ■post. One of the pleasures of such a visit is the warm welcome one always gets from the garrison. Life there is apt to bo dull when it is not dangerous, and visitors are not frequent. One brings a breath of the normal world which seems hundreds of miles away; one brings perhaps a newspaper and a few cigarettes. Sometimes the post consists of a dugout in a wood surrounded with wire. If it is in the open, it is a more or less elaborate system of earthworks approached by trenches of the oldfashioned kind, or it may be that- a cottage is utilised, a cottage in one of those silent, frozen-looking villages of the forward zone where normal life suddenly stopped short at the beginning of last September. * Wherever it may he an unfailing feature is an interesting outlook; and the officer in command takes pleasure in pointing out to the visitor the significant objects in the landscape.

More often than not it is a strangely hushed and immobile landscape, apparently deserted by the human race. But there are sectors whore I have seen Germans moving about; and again it may happen that a bombardment breaks the silence. There is a thud behind, then that old familiar rending sound in the sky as though the clouds were silk being torn by a giant’s steady hand; one looks through a spyhole, and yonder, not half a mile away great black fountains hurst up from the hillside. They are tho explosions of the shells of the French 155’s. Within the next 10 minutes or so many explode. Then, as we make our way on to the next post, all is silent again except for the March birds that are beginning to practise their songs all indifferent to the shelling. Many of these little posts have by this time their own little history—sometimes of an attack rebuffed, sometimes of a bombardment and sometimes of anxious nights with prowling Gorman parties in the neighbourhood. The men engaged may he few, hut for them it is, as one of them put it to me, “a 100 per cent war.” It is a privilege to visit them and a wonderful privilege to hear the tales of some encounters, told on the spot with the scene before one to illustrate the details. ■