FIGHTING TO DEATH.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LIX, Issue 253, 25 September 1939, Page 7

FIGHTING TO DEATH.

POLES ON HEL PENINSULA

REFUGEES FLEE TO HUNGARY

Received September 25. 10.45 a.m. LONDON, Sept. 24. The Poles are fighting to the death. Hel Peninsula is still under heavy bombardment from land and sea. A German communique says: “Our navy has joined in a renewed bombardment of Hel.”, A message from Warsaw says that German artillery destitiyed. four churches, and three hospitals are filled with wounded. The Times correspondent on the Lithuanian frontier says that here and there the Poles desperately resisted the Russians, particularly at Grodno, where street fighting continued. The Russian method of occupying unresisting towns and hamlets consists of sending in motor-cycles or a motorcar with a few soldiers, who paste up bills giving the people 24 hours’ notice to quit. Many of the inhabitants steal away and hide, but their ultimate escape is unlikely. Occupation begins the next day with varying degrees of ceremony'. The local Soviets have formed a new order functioning almost completely in Yilna, Baranowicze and other western White Russian towns. The Munkac correspondent of tne Associated Press of Great Britain says that the large-scale transportation or Polish military and civilian refugees to Lower Hungary has begun. Russian and Hungarian troops have formally made contact in the Carpathians. Eight thousand Polish soldiers, crossing the frontier before the Russians had appeared, had fought a rearguard action in which bands o Ukrainian terrorists-were killed and manv others in despair committed suicide. A Polish priest disclosed that terrorists lined up 40 Catho, ' c theological students in Lwow (Lemberg) and shot them “In they strike at anything godly, he officers said the Russians told them they did not want to hg i the Poles, and added that the Russians were rounding up the Ukrainian terrorists, and distributing food.