LEND-LEASE FOR FRANCE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 78, 29 September 1943, Page 5

LEND-LEASE FOR FRANCE

HINTS OF 1944 INVASIONS BELGIUM, NORWAY AND GREECE TOO (Kec. 11.50 a.m.) Washington, Sept. 28. Hints of next year’s invasion campaigns were given by Lieut.-Colonel Gaud, at the War Department conference of industrialists, Labour leaders and newspaper executives, when he disclosed that ten per cent, of the milita;y lend-lease for 1944 ha'’, been earmarked for France, Belgium, Norway and Greece. “This year’s lend-lease programme calls for 5,400,000,000 dollars worth of supplies, chiefly for Britain, Russia and China,” Colonel Gaud said. “Air Forces have done a super 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.” He explained that General Stillwell, U.S. Chief of Forces in China, had established in India a great training camp for Chinese. Cargo planes which carried American supplies into China returned into India loaded with Chinese soldiers. Some of these Chinese troops were already guarding American Army engineers building roads, but mostly they would return to China and train other Chinese in the use of modern machinery. Colonel Gaud said that Russians were now receiving go much equipment that the Persian Gulf route transport system was strained, at least on the Russian front. Locomotives had become more important than tanks as the Russians were now asking for hundreds of locomotives and fifty per cent, more trucks.