FRENCH REMEMBER

Waikato Independent, Volume XL, Issue 3665, 8 February 1940, Page 7

FRENCH REMEMBER

“THEY SHALL NOT PASS” INCIDENT BEHIND THE LINES The Frenchman at my side looked reflectively at the polish on hrs army riding boots. I will tell you why in a moment. I was gazing at the polish of the panorama itself. For once it wasn’t raining, and the sky was brilliantly blue (writes Godfrey Winn of the Daily Mirror, from the Western Front). Moreover, we were standing in one of the most beautiful squares in the world, in a town not far behind the Maginot Line. The square has great wrought gates, framed in gold, and all the facade’s of the houses are united by a gold leaf

pattern in peace time brings travellers from far and wide. , Now we are at : war. ; v. ■ >...• *• New in the sky there are three tiny specks, crossing at intervals, and I become conscious that they are enemy planes, because the blue is suddenly broken up by little clouds of puffy white smoke. My companion, because it happens to be one side of his particular job, knows what is their mission, there in the heaVens, on this winter’s morning that is unexpectedly like the summer. He knows that they are dropping pamphlets, and what are the contents. There are four pictures in each of these pamphlets, which are designed simply for one purpose, and that is to

try to separate the French froih the British. WJhat a hope! . . < , The pictures ‘represent a French soldier and an Englishman, meeting, making friends, walking away, arm in arm together. And then suddenly they are surprised by the enemy. The Fz*enchman falls in a river of blood, and you see the Englishman, unscathed, retreating away from his ally, without a backward glance. • Can you beat that for unconvincing crudity ? The French commandant at my side, I have already told you, was staring down at the toe of one of his boots. Now I twill explain why. It wasn’t for the shine, for he had just said to me: “You see that dent? I received it as a memento from the Germans in the last war. Nothing spectacular

happened,, you understand ... it was simplyMthat I got my feet-caught in some of their barbed wire. “But in the 20 years of peace that there have been, every time I went riding in the Bois 1 wore these boots,, and saw that dent, and remembered- .... and if you remember such a tiny thing . . . what about the rest .... how could any of us forget ? They must be crazy if they imagine we have such short memories of how our men and your men stood shoulder to shoulder when the order went forth‘They shall not pass'.” He. paused for a moment, and then he added quietly: “You understand, it was barbed wire entanglements they had phit up on our soil to try to keep us from recapturing our own country.' 5.