SCHMELING REPORTED ALIVE

Evening Post, Volume CXXXI, Issue 127, 31 May 1941, Page 9

SCHMELING REPORTED ALIVE

LONDON, May 30

ft is stated officially in Berlin that Max Schmeling, the boxer, who was reported killed in Crete, is alive in an air force hospital, to which he was taken from Crete after contracting a mild attack of a tropical disease.— U.P.A.

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stand seems to have eclipsed the highest hopes held a few days ago.

WAR-STREWN PLAIN,

The havoc around Canea and Suda Bay has levelled olive groves and strewn the whole 10-mile coastal plain with wounded and dead and with the wreckage of broken cars, guns, lorries, carts, and village houses.

When, after 60 hours of continuous assault, the Germans finally entered Canea on May 28, they found the town a blackened ruin. The only sign of life was the wounded being tended underground by a few British doctors and Greek assistants.

The Cairo correspondent of the "Daily Express" says that low-flying German aircraft are bombing the British wounded embarking in fishing boats and small steamers.

The Berlin correspondent of the "New York Times" has cabled his paper saying: "The evidence overwhelmingly indicates that the fall of Crete is imminent, due primarily to Britain's lack of local air power." GERMANS' HARDEST FIGHT. One military expert in Cairo estimated the German air-borne troops in Crete at 30,000, though it is admittedly difficult to estimate accurately the enemy forces in such a confused situation, where attack and counter-attack alternate unendingly, especially in the areas near the vita] Suda Bay.

It is stated in Cairo that British reinforcements of men and material have reached Crete, but it is uncertain whether these are in addition to those mentioned last night.

The German news agency says that the hardest fight, to capture Canea, occurred around a British stronghold in the mountainous village of Galatos. where finally a break-through disrupted the whole of the British defences between Canea and the high mountains. The German agency claimed that the British were making every preparation to escape by sea.—U.P.A.