HINTS OF INVASION

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXIII, Issue 258, 29 September 1943, Page 5

HINTS OF INVASION

LEASE-LEND SUPPLIES FOR OCCUPIED COUNTRIES (N.Z. Press Association.—Copyright.) (11.50 a.m.) WASHINGTON, Sept 28 Hints of next year’s invasion

campaigns were given by Lieut.Colonel Gaud at a War Department conference of industrialists, labour leaders, and newspaper

executives, when lie disclosed that 10 per cent, of the military Lease-Lend iu 1944 had been earmarked for France, Belgium,

Norway and Greece. • This year’s Lease-Lend programme calls for 5.400,000,000 dollars’ worth of supplies, chiefly for Britain, Russia and China, Colonel Gaud said. The air forces have done a superb job in maintaining the air route to China, but this method has serious limitations and the Allies have not been sitting idle waiting for the opening of a land route into China. Colonel Gaud explained that General Stilwell had established in India a great training camp for Chinese Cargo planes which carry American supplies into China return to India loaded with Chinese soldiers. Some of these Chinese troops are already guarding American army engineers building roads, but mostly they will return to China and train other Chinese in the use of modern machinery.

Colonel Gaud said the Russians are now receiving so much equipment by the Persian Gulf route that the transport system is strained, at least on the’ Russian front. Locomotives have become more important than tanks, as the Russians aro now asking for hundreds of locomotives and 50 per cent, more trucks.

Warships of the Royal Navy today shelled enemy positions on the Plain of Naples, in the vicinity of the base of Vesuvius. This was the first time such help has been

given so far north of Salerno. A correspondent says it looked as if some of the Navy’s shells lift an ammunition dump, as a great column of smoke rose into the air so high that it mingled with the smoko of Vesuvius.

It was a first-class example of Anglo-American co-operation. Ati American army observation post did the spotting for the Navy’s rangefinders and the results were perfect.