IN MIDDLE EAST

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 86, Issue 65, 18 March 1942, Page 5

IN MIDDLE EAST

! DEFENCE AGAINST NAZI DRIVE BRITISH PREPARATIONS (By Telegrapi.—Press Association —Copyright.) (Recd. 7.55.) London, March 17. British Army engineers are using thousands of Syrian, Iraqi and Persian labourers blasting and tunnelling fortifications as a precaution against the German drive through Turkey toward the .Middle East oilfields, says the Daily Express’ correspondent with the Tenth Army. The Ninth and Tenth Armies Hold this vital 1200-mile from from Beirut to Teheran. Months of work on the fortifications are now showing results in concrete strong-points, tanktraps, pill-boxes and gun emplacements. Behind this deeply-fortified line lie good roads and many airfields I from which a large force of planes can operate against forces invading Turkey. Deep defences are built along the 250 miles of the northern 1 frontier covering the Kirkum and ’ Mosul oilfields. The Allied disnositions are strong ! and the ground organisation is ! thorough. The numbers of the Tenth Army arc not as numerous as might be wishci but they are highly trained and very familiar with its vast terrain. Oil from Iraq is flowing in profusion into Syria and Palestine. Long convoys of lorries are piling up ammunition stores in Syria in evergrowing dumps. Army and Air Force officers are undergoing combined courses of training, ensuring proper co-operation with the naval forces. The three services stationed at Cyprus are being correlated into strategy for repelling a flank attack against the Holy Land.