HOLDERS OF MAGINOT LINE

Waikato Times, Volume 126, Issue 21098, 27 April 1940, Page 11 (Supplement)

HOLDERS OF MAGINOT LINE

“CONCRETE KIDS” :: AS SOLID AS THE FORTIFICATIONS

(Mallory Browne in American journal)

'J'HE QUESTION most frequently, and most anxiously put to anyone returning to England from the Front is not whether the incredible fortresses of the Maginot Line seem strong enough to resist the Germans, but whether the morale of the French soldiers appears solid enough to stand the inactivity and boredom of endless waiting in the close confinement of those underground dreadnoughts. The Germans have been boasting in their propaganda by radio and otherwise that they would never need to attack the Maginot Line—a few months of idleness and the French—who were good fighters but whose unstable Latin temperament, they asserted, could not stand enforced and prolonged inactivity shut up in close quarters under the earth—would in the end simply have to give up. In view of the widespread circulation these suggestions received in Britain, I made every effort, during a recent visit to the front, to ascertain whether there was any foundation for them. Let me say at once that, although I had exceptional opportunities, not only of talking alone to private soldiers, non-commissioned officers, and officers of the line, but also—what is often more revealing—of watching and listening to them unobserved, I found No Trace of any Fissure in the Morale of the French troops. On the contrary, their general condition and “esprit de corps” struck me as magnificent. Other American correspondents who had visited different sections of the frontier have fully confirmed this, and so have, even more recently, expert military observers sent over from London to investigate this very point. They came back impressed by the grim yet cheerful determination of the French soldiers of all ranks, to see this job through to the end, and to do it thoroughly. It is true that existence in cramped subterranean corridors and caves of concrete and steel is no joke, and that without the stimulus of combat this troglgdite life does tend to become more difficult as the weeks of waiting go by. Indeed, one is at first impelled to ask, “How can they stand it?” But those who expect the French troops to “crack up” under the strain overlook several Important features in the Maginot defence system—and some important facts about the defenders themselves. In the first place, the “poilus” who man the Maginot fortresses are an unusually husky lot, hardy French peasants for the most part. In so far as possible, the men who hold the forts are farmers who live on the land which these forts defend—a fact of tremendous importance when one knows the Frenchman’s love for his own land and the passionate obstinacy with which he will defend it. Furthermore, these fortifications are complex mechanisms, require long specialised training, only to be had in the forts themselves. The soldiers who are now holding the Line are those who had already been trained in peacetime to do so. Most of them had spent many months, a year, or perhaps even two years, in the Maginot Line. They had therefore become thoroughly accustomed to remaining in them for long periods. Thus they had been not only trained and hardened, but actually habituated and acclimated to the peculiar steel-and-concrete cave-man existence they lead there. On the other hand, the West Wall, or Siegfried Line was not begun until the summer of 1938, and most of it is, therefore of such recent date that relatively few troops could have had the specialised training and the invaluable hardening to the particular rigours of remaining for long periods shut up in concrete blockhouses. It is, in my opinion, because they themselves have not yet become accustomed to such a prospect of confinement, that the Germans believe the French would not be able to face it for very long. For it is an unrelieved outlook in this respect: Manning the Maginot Line is no half-time job, nor temporary assignment. This emerged pointedly from an incident during my visit to one of the bigger blockhouses somewhere in Alsace. Noticing that the men still wore the old horizon blue uniforms instead of the khaki now adopted by the French army as the least visible, I asked why. “But we do not need the khaki—no one is going to see us here inside our forts,” was the surprised reply of the young lieutenant in command of the post. “Ah, yes,” I agreed, “but what about when you leave the fort—if you were obliged to retreat, for instance?” “Retreat?” he exclaimed, still more surprised, and a bit indignant, “But, Monsieur, We Shall Not Retreat.” “Oh, no, of course,” I hastily corrected, “I didn’t mean to imply that I thought it likely. But, after all, you might be ordered to fall back for strategic reasons or, at least, to withdraw after you had been relieved.” This time the lieutenant smiled as he shook his head. “No, Monsieur,” he said, “not even then. We do not retire or withdraw. We shall not be relieved. We remain here, whatever happens, to the end.” It was said simply, but with an evident pride which I could easily see was fully shared by this little group of rugged “poilus.” They seemed almost to have taken on something of the unyielding hardness of their steel and

reinforced concrete shelter that had been their world for nearly five months and, as far as they knew, would continue to be so indefinitely. There is no doubt that the French troops in the Maginot Line have already a highly developed sense of “esprit de corps,” of responsibility in their special position. No army emblem is worn more proudly in France today than the round metal insignia, depicting a blockhouse with protruding cannon, jauntily pinned to beret or jacket, which distinguishes “les gars du beton”—literally “the concrete kids.” One might perhaps wonder, however, whether French individualism and initiative, if it does not rebel at the restriction and boredom of these forts, must not, as an alternative, be crushed out and broken. I think the following true story should Controvert Any Such Conjectures Early Christmas morning, in our tour of the Front, we arrived at the famous bridge across the Rhine at Kehl, near the now deserted city of Strasbourg. A big blockhouse stands squarely across the road at the bridgehead, and on top of it that morning was, in addition to the usual French and British flags, a Christmas tree. This tree had been flauntingly set up, with ostentatious glee, by the Germans behind their barbed wire barrier at the other end of the bridge. At midnight on Christmas Eve, a corporal from the French blockhouse, accompanied by a private, traversed the 300-yard-long bridge, reached the other end, and, braving almost certain discovery by the look-outs, actually went behind the German barbed wire barriers, seized and brought back the tree, and fastened it triumphantly on the roof of the French fort! When the corporal told us the story the captain who was accompanying us called the poilu sharply to attention, saying severely: “It’s my duty to reprimand you for taking grave risks unnecessarily—and,” he broke off, taking the man’s hand and shaking it warmly, “it’s a pleasure to congratulate you!” he finished with a delighted smile. No; there’s not much cause for concern. The old saying about every French private having a Marshal’s baton ir his knapsack remains as potentially true in concrete pill boxes and underground fortresses as it was in the trenches. Before going to the Front, I had heard some apprehensions expressed, not only in London, but to a less extent in Paris, as well, about the Alsatians. After all, it was argued, they are not wholly French; from their language they almost seem German. Is it safe to trust them to defend so much of the frontier? for it is a fact that most of the forts along the Rhine are manned chiefly by Alsatian conscripts). But here again, experience on the spot is reassuring. France has had the wisdom to realise that these people, if they are different from the n f ihe French, are emphatically not German; they are Alsatians, and Loyal to an Understanding France, which, even in wartime, freely allows them to retain their Alsatian character with its many Germanic associations. This was picturesquely illustrated by what happened to me on Christmas Eve. With one other American war correspondent I dined at the officers’ mess in an old fort—built by the Germans before 1914 then enristened Prince Frederick Wilhelm Fort, but now called Fort Petain. Afterwards we were invited to a fete presented by the regiment in an old powder magazine. As we entered the long, vaulted, stone room in the wake of the colonel, the “orchestra”—a piano a violin, a saxophone—started to play. . . . Could it be? N ° yes! It; . reall y wa s the “Star-Spangled Banner, played—a bit unsteadily, perhaps, but very enthusiastically, while the whole company stood at atten.J}? 1 ?- was truly, for one a long way from home on the Night of Nights, an unforgetable moment. I was no less moved when, as the climax of the programme of entertainment put on by the men in the fort, a dozen husky poilus, all Alsatians (as were 80 per cent of the regiment), gathered around a big, gaily decorated Christmas tree and sang—in German first—“Oh, Tannenbaum!”” followed with the French version: “Monbeau Sapin.” Afterwards all the company joined m “Silent Night, Holy Night”—again first in German as “Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht,” next with equal fervour in French as “Douce Nuit, Sainte Nuit.” Then as we all joined in a vibrant chorus of “La Marseillaise ” I recalled, almost with a start, that this was going on within easy range of the German guns across the Rhine. There, too, I mused, soldiers were probably singing “Oh, Tannenbaum” and “Still Nacht, Heilige Nacht" but not in French, as well as German—not while the Nazi regulations still prevailed there. Nevertheless, one somehow felt, listening to those Alsatian soldiers of France singing alternatively in German and French, in the candlelight around a Christmas tree, that the gap was not so wide after all, and that it might not be so very long before it would be bridged with the angel message of “On earth peace, goodwill toward men.” Meanwhile, as long as it seems necessary, the “gars du beton,” solid, resistant guardians of the Maginot Line, can be relied upon to hold the fort for France.