FOOTSLOGGING RETURNS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25560, 13 June 1944, Page 5

FOOTSLOGGING RETURNS

MARCHING THROUGH MEADOWS LONDON, June 11. • The days of footslogging and bicycling for the British Army have returned, says the British United Press correspondent with the advanced Allied troops in France. Infantry on the roads south of Bayeux are pushing on on foot behind the tanks, or pedalling cycles. The fighting at this stage is mostly across meadows, amid country lanes and over wooded slopes. After a couple of hours’ marching, the men sat at the roadside and the peasants watched them brew the inevitable cup of. tea. ' “ I went on to a hamlet which looked as if a tornado or fire had swept through it, and came on our tanks fanning out across fields. They fired over the spires of the next village, and then advanced through the meadows. The infantry followed in single file. “The battlefront is a complete mdze. You pass from one village to another Before you know where you are you are in no-man’s-land. There is nothing like a definite front line. You see behind hedges British with machineguns, while tanks or guns peer from the edge of woods. Then a few hundred yards on you find a deserted village with German dead lying in the rubble of destroyed houses. There is a German sniper in almost every field. “ The Germans south of the CaenBayeux road are using pioneers and peasant labour to build trenches and anti-tank obstacles, and to. convert villages, chateaux, and farms into strohgpoints and redoubts.”