FRENCH GUERRILLAS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 87, Issue 61, 15 March 1943, Page 5

FRENCH GUERRILLAS

WAGING OPEN WARFARE Recd. 9 p.m. London, March 13. Large numbers of French guerrillas, under General Cartier and other high officers, are reported to be waging open warfare in Haute Sovoie, which was occupied by Italians. Axis authorities are rushing up reinforcements to quell the guerrillas, who are said to be armed with American machine-guns, rifles and revolvers dropped from Allied planes which recently flew over the district. Sounds of shooting coming from the French province bordering Switzerland were heard in Geneva, says one Swiss newspaper. The attacks against the Germa t occuption forces were carried out simultaneously with military precision in such widely-separated places as Paris. Lyons, Lille, Brest, Lons and Rochelle, says the Swiss newspaper Volkrecht. These attacks are no longer individual undertakings but the beginning of organised partisan warfare. The newspaper emphasises that H e upheaval coincides with the withdrawal of Axis troops from France 1o the Russian front. Although only half the guerrillas in the South cf France are armed, they recently -••w--tured a strongly-defended goods train which was converted into an armoured train and then used to carry fugitives from the Germans into Ihe interior.

The British United Press, Quoting Swiss reports, states that the French guerrillas’ army now numbers 100,000 active partisans. In the South of France the entire railway system is threatened with dislocation by sabotage French State police claim to have tracked down a sabotage ring which was responsible for interference with the railways leading to the German bases on the Mediterranean.