AID TO ALLIES

Otago Daily Times, Issue 25718, 14 December 1944, Page 6

AID TO ALLIES

PRAISE FOR DE GAULLE

FIGHTING FRENCH EXPLOITS

The consequences of General de Gaulle’s faith and of his actions have been incalculable, writes Sir John Pollock in the Contemporary Review, London. From a small band of brothers in arms under the Cross of Lorraine that General de Gaulle took for his banner, the Fighting French have swollen until they became, even before the Allied assault on the Atlantic ’ wall that was the first act in the liberation of France, the fourth armed force in (Size among all those ranged against the German might. At the moment of our landing in Normandy there were over 200,000 soldiers in the Fighting French Army, and some 300,000 more trained or in training; a small but redoubtable fleet of French ships of war ceaselessly aided ours in hunting German ships at sea and protecting Allied convoys; over 600,000 tons of French shipping formed part of those coftvoys; French airmen had their own fighter squadrons in the Mediterranean and in Russia, and their own bomber squadrons based in England. It was the Fighting French under General Koenig who, in May and June, 1942, held Bir Hakeim against immensely superior German forces for 16 days, and.it was those 16 days that gave time for us to dig in at El Alamein, and so for General Alexander in turn to attack Rommel and drive the Germans out of Africa. The brilliant. French part more recently played in the assault on the Gustav and Hitler lines in Italy and also in the advance to the Rhine needs no emphasis; but the words of a British soldier serving in Italy should be more widely known. This soldier wrote: “ So far the outstanding feature is the performance of the French. All the glory of the French Army has been reborn, and Frenchmen, when attacking, are truly formidable.’’ All this has flowed from General de Gaulle’s leadership. But, more than even this, he drew to the Cross of Lorraine the whole of the French Colonial Empire, save for Indo-China, handed over by Petain to the Japanese—which surrender incidentally lost us Singapore. The French Colonial Empire gave the Allies their indispensable lifeline across Africa from the Gulf of Guinea to Egypt, without which we should have had no closer communication with the Middle East in. critical days than round the Cape of Good Hope.