NAZI TACTICS

Evening Post, Volume CXXX, Issue 4, 4 July 1940, Page 13

NAZI TACTICS

WAR OF MOVEMENT

ARTILLERY, MORTARS,

PLANES

(By Air Mall, from "The Post's" London Representative.)

LONDON, June 4.

Nazi tactics in France were related by a soldier from a famous Scottish regiment on his return from Dunkirk.

"This has been a war of movement and there was no time to dig in," he said. "You meet Jerry, and the first thing thrown at you is high explosive from artillery. That keeps you pretty close to the ground. Then they have been opening up on us with four-inch trench mortars—score? of them. These mortars are very efficient. "On top of this comes an attack by low-flying planes. The combination of these. three means^ that the Germans can bring their infantry up to within twenty-five yards or so of the British lines. Time after time this is what has happened. When the barrage ended we looked up, and there they were— scores and scores of Germans armed with tommy guns and rifles. Time and time again we threw them back, and time and time again we had .to retreat in face of their overwhelming numbers.

"Often they were ten to one. We retreated steadily and in orderly fashion the whole time, and we exacted an enormous toll of the enemy. But their superiority of equipment was such that it was merely a question of hanging on as long as we could and then getting back as slowly as we could and still holding them up. Man to man, nobody in the British Army has the slightest fear of any German."