GERMANY’S HOUR.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 60, Issue 304, 1 October 1940, Page 6

GERMANY’S HOUR.

SIGNING OF ARMISTICE WITH FRANCE. CEREMONY DESCRIBED. A Columbia Broadcasting system representative, speaking from a portable radio transmitter 30 yards from the carriage in the forest of C’ompiegne where the Franco-German armistice was signed described the scene thus: At 2.45 p.m. the French delegates had left the dining-car of the railway coach to confer by telephone with "the French Government in Bordeaux. Afterward from a nearby field kitchen they were given a meat luncheon and tea. They ate sitting in the hot sunshine in a little clearing round the car. Meanwhile, in Bordeaux, the French Government was in session. When its instructions were received by the French delegates at Compiegnc by special telephone line across the battlefield, delegates again entered the railway ear, A few minor last-minute amendments were made to the document. Then General Huntzinger signed for France. General von Keitel signed for Germany. They exchanged their copies and signed again. One of the French delegates wept. Praise for the Dead. Von Iveitel spoke a few words of praise for the “German and bravo French soldiers who have bled for their Fatherland, and those who have died for their country.” All in the car rose to their feet and stood in silence for one minute.

General Huntzinger, in signing the document said: “The French Government lias ordered me to sign the armistice despite its very hard conditions. France has a right to expect in future negotiations that Germany will show a spirit which will permit two great neighbouring countries to live and work peacefully.’’ Six minutes afterward, at 5.57 p.m., the French delegates left the diningcar and walked slowly to their tent. They looked rmry dejected. There was no guard of honour, .no bands played.

A car was waiting, and they were driven at once to a nearby airfield, where an aeroplane was waiting with its engine. running ready to take off for Italy. It was a German ’plane with a German pilot.

Hitler was not present at the ceremony, which occupied only a few minutes.

As the French envoys sped along under overcast skies to join the aeroplane for Italy they overtook flocks of refugees wearily trudging along the road not knowing that the armistice had been signed. Hitler’s Interpreter. The armistice talks were conducted through the medium of Hitler’s official interpreter, Dr. Schmidt, who acted in the same capacity during the talks between Hitler and iVlr Chamberlain in September, 1938. At the time of the ceremony the French Cabinet was in session in Bordeaux. It had sat almost continuously all day. The telephone line which was fixed up from the crossroads in the forest of Compeigne to Bordeaux for the use of the French pleniotentiaries was described by the broadcaster as one of the “little of the war. The line, he said, went right thrfiugh the respective front lines where fighting was still in progress. The Germans had a line which went as far as Tours. There, the German Army engineers strung a line over the bridge across the Loire so that it could be hooked up with the French line.