FRENCH REPULSE ATTACKS

Southland Times, Issue 23948, 14 October 1939, Page 5

FRENCH REPULSE ATTACKS

MACHINEGUNS AND GRENADES USED NO-MAN’S-LAND TORN BY SHELLS (United Press Assn.—Telegraph Copyright) PARIS, October 12. The fighting on the Western Front is emerging from the advance guard stage into front line action, according to official French despatches. No-man’s-land is rapidly turning into a mud field torn with shell holes. Some close fighting was occurring as the Germans were attacking more strongly but the French still command the initiative. “There has been activity among our advance units, particularly south, from Saarbrucken. Both sides set ambushes,” says a corpmunique. The chief engagement occurred in the Moselle Corridor where, using automatic guns and hand-grenades, strong German detachments advanced right up to the French positions but fell back in the face of a withering fire, writes the Paris corresponded of the British United Press. The Germans crawled through the darkness to the barbed-wire defences and the French attacked the enemy with machine-guns and hand-grenades from a distance of a few feet. The Germans came over in successive waves but retreated, leaving a considerable number of dead. A later communique says that activity among the first line units spread during the night on many parts of the front between the Rhine and the Moselle. The activity of one of the German raids was particularly fierce, says an official commentator on the Western Front. It was preceded by a heavy artillery barrage but the results were entirely in our favour. Not a single prisoner was taken by the enemy. Rain fell in an unceasing deluge over the Saar region for some hours. The Paris correspondent of the Associated Press of America says that the Germans suffered many casualties in recent attacks on the French who were well entrenched and had not lost an inch of ground. The French losses were slight. The Associated Press of America reports that the German Air Force is preparing for action against the British Fleet. ' GREAT BRITISH ARMY French observers who paid a visit to the British troops in France said: “After three days spent at the British General Headquarters there is no doubt of our ally’s great qualities—their sense of discipline, their faith in the cause they are serving, their quiet resolution and above all the perfection of their morale. “In no spirit of bravado, with no flourish of trumpets has this great British Army come to our shores. His Majesty’s soldiers, like their French comrades, wear an ail of cold resolution. They are men who have come to accomplish a necessary task.” A German High Command communique states that there was minor patroi and artillery activity on the Western Front and minor air reconnaissance activity in the North Sea. On die Western Front a French aeroplane was shot down south of Lauterburg in an aerial combat.

POSSIBILITIES OF WAR IN AIR BOTH SIDES THOUGHT TO BE HESITANT NEW YORK, October 12. Lord Marley, in an interview on his arrival, said: “Britain will bomb German industrial centres only if the German Air Force attacks London. "We have too great a respect for human lives, but if Herr Hitler starts we will have to go on. “You see, nobody yet knows the possibilities of aerial warfare, and I think both sides are hesitating to begin. There is a possibility that we may have a limited kind of war just using armies.”