LEND-LEASE OPERATIONS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25344, 30 September 1943, Page 5

LEND-LEASE OPERATIONS

SIGNIFICANT FEATURES HINTS OF INVASION POINTS WASHINGTON, Sept. 28. Hints of next year’s invasion campaigns were given by Lieutenantcolonel Gaud at a War Department conference of industrialists, labour leaders, and newspaper executive officers when he disclosed that 10 per cent, of the military lend-lease for 1944 had 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 that the air forces had done a superb job in. maintaining the air route to China, but this method had serious limitations. The Allies had not been sitting idle waiting for the opening of the land route into China.

Colonel Gaud explained that General J. Stilwell had established in India a great training camp for the 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 who are building roads, but most of them will return to China to train other Chinese in the use of modern machinery. Colonel Gaud said the Russians were now receiving so much equipment by the Persian Gulf route that the transport system was strained, and locomotives had become more important than tanks. The Russians were now asking for hundreds of locomotives and 50 per cent, more trucks.