GIGANTIC WORK

Evening Post, Volume CXX, Issue 38, 13 August 1935, Page 9

GIGANTIC WORK

NEW FRENCH DEFENCES

Colonel Fabry; War Minister, and the Chamber Army Commission recently .completed an exhaustive inspection Of the great French frontier fortified lines which now extend almost from the North Sea at Dunkirk to the Swiss frontier at Basic, says the "Daily Mail."

During the past six months, great progress, has been made.in bringing the normal garrisons nearer the lines that they are to hold in, the event of hostilities and also in filling in with field works the gaps between the groups of forts.

M. Marc Rucart, deputy for the Vosges Department and a member of the Chamber Army Commission, gives in the "Matin" an authorised description of the fortified lines and the progress that has been made.

He points out that the building of the forts can only be compared to the gigantic operations of the old Egyptians. More than 16,000,000 cubic feet of earth was shifted, and some 2,000,000 cubic feet of reinforced concrete and steal was sunk in the piles on the frontier line outside Metz.

An important task has been the preparation of tha ground for a possible offensivs by tanks. Sections of railway line have been stuck perpendicularly in the earth like great teeth—sometimes in rows of six—over which, it is claimed, not even a tank could pass.

The Metz group of forts is linked by underground passages which, if put end to end, would, be twenty miles in length. •

The observation posts which are the "eyes' of the guns and machine-guns are linked to their battery positions by passages which range from 90 to 120 feet deep.

Many of the underground .galleries are 16ft wide, and accommodate a double track for the light electric railway, which carries munitions and supplies.