FREEZING WEATHER

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 84, Issue 15, 18 January 1940, Page 6

FREEZING WEATHER

EUROPE AGAIN IN WINTER’S GRIP INTENSE COLD ON THE WESTERN FRONT • By Teksraph - Press Association—Copyright) Received Jan. 17, 10.5 p.m. LONDON. Jan. 17. Further freezing weather has I gripped Europe. Estonia is experiencing the coldest winter since 1866. «he temperature being 82 degrees below Fahrenheit. Bitter winds sent Moscow’s temperatures to 76 degrees below freezing point and closed all schools. Denmark records temperatures of 50 degrees below freezing point, resulting *n deaths, immobilising shipping ;n the harbours, and causing a c.ai shortage. The ccrsorship prohibits mention of Britain’s v eather. ’t is to cold on the Western Front that British soldiers manning outposts within rifle range of the German lines arc robbed of their sleep. Their only shelter is shallow dugouts and log huts. Fires are forbidden as the smoke would guide the enemy patrols and attract artillery. Physical exercises, such as the stamping of feet, are rot permitted, because the impact of heavy boots on the frozen earth echoes like a shot. Dress discipline in the forward areas has been relaxed. The men wear scarves and Balaclavas and use straw-tilled sandbags as footwarmers. Sentries at night must pull back their Balaclavas and strain their ears in the bitter wind, as a result of which they suffer from the cold acutely. Those in the advance posts are relieved after short periods and sent hack to a base town to rest. The static nature of the war has produced numbers of personalities on both sides of no-man’s-land. One is “George,” a German sniper, who carries tea to the breastwork every I morning and does exercises 900 yards from the nearest British outpost. ' Efforts to snipe him have failed.