FRENCH DRIVE INTO SAAR VALLEY REPORTED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 September 1939, Page 5

FRENCH DRIVE INTO SAAR VALLEY REPORTED

Allied Planes Bomb Enemy Munition Plants STRONG FORCES OF TANKS EMPLOYED (By Telegraph.—Press Association.—Copyright.) LONDON, September 6. A French communique announced that the French forces were progressing’ beyond the German frontier. Simultaneously French and British planes, supporting land troops, battered munition plants in the north Saar. It is reported that Strasbourg and other cities such as Erstein have been evacuated. A Polish radio broadcast intercepted here states that the French forces are at Saarbrucken. An earlier Polish report said that the French forces were on the outskirts of Saarbrucken late today and advancing so rapidly that the Germans were unable to evacuate the police and municipal administrations. (

Some credence is given to these reports by military experts, as a deep salient of French territory protrudes into the Reich. This section is regarded as one of the weak points in the German frontier.

A broadcast in London earlier in the evening reported heavy firing “oast of Luxemburg.” Saarbrucken is less than 50 miles south-east of Luxemburg.

According to Luxemburg reports the maximum French advance toward Saarbrucken was a. little more than seven miles. It is reported that the French used 500 tanks in one operation. In an advance 125 miles further north, ,300 Allied planes attacked a German position. Allied planes in large numbers also attacked the great steel munitions region in the Ruhr, centred round Essen.

Unofficial despatches report a French tank advance toward Saarbrucken and raids by 300 Allied aeroplanes over the Rhineland industrial sector. The despatches indicated the penetration of the German lines at Saarbrucken and an aerial bombardment of Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle).