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HomeMy WebLinkAboutZurich Herald, 1943-02-04, Page 3CLEAN . NG UP IN TUNISIA Handy horse trough 'somewhere in Tunisia makes a wash basin for British paratrooper cleaning some of that embattled country's mud off his boots. GIVES UP PRECIt`',° US D I S H E S, - PANS TO CAMOUFLAGE MINES S False Holes Dug in Roads To Delay German. Advance. What Have Canadians, To Sacrifice, So Precious To Them? Money Means Relatively Little But We Can At Least Give It. By Gregory Clark The Russian sergeant was ex- ,glaining to the woman by the roadside that his 20 men — who Thad comp in three trucks—were up to. "We are mining the road," he raid. "A whole regiment of Ger- man tanks has broken out of Stalingrad. They may conte' this .road. We have been sent to delay them." "Why are. you swearing?" the woman asked. "Because what can I do with 18 mines?" cried the sergeant bit terry. "When they hit the first one, they will all stop while the pioneers get out and search and find the other 17 . - "They can't \leave the road," said the woman cheerfully. "If they get out in these drifts, the swamps will swallow their tanks like frogs." "I know, I. know," said the ser- geant. "Then don't hide the mines," ani t the wozrtan "Just ,pretend to ii'ido "ijiem: 'bl''htiftt idni bies;:'abn"' put three mines at random in three of the holes. The rest are dummies. But it will take them just as long to test the dummies." "You're a smart woman," said the sergeant. "What can we put on top of the dummy holes?" "Piates, tin pots, anything," aatd the woman. "I'll get mine." And while the mine layers dug holes and buried only' three mines at random in the sett, the woman The Pacific Ocean ;.i lm and Peaceful Greater In Area Than En- tire Land Surface of Globe The Pacific Ocean was named by Magellan, the great Portuguese who was the first man to cross it —ninety-eight days under sail, from. the Straits of Magellan in South. America to Guam, W. B. ''ourtney writes in Collier's. He called it "Pacific"—calm and peaceful. In this respect, ;lfagel- ?ata was lucky ---as many a Yank righting man could testify, ort of 'Ms green -faced misery. In its rtorma, as in all ether think the Pacific drives the In 01,0; eonserv- el,ive to superlatives; it is biggest, widest, deepest, bluest, quietest, grandest and wildest. * HS area is ;;,eater than i11e en- tire land surf eee of the gena. you .'could drop the whole United States in any one of several ex- panses of •the Pacific, and none of its frontiers would touch as much as an islet. Yet its map in places is as salted with island.:; as the Milky Way is with stars: although ®:ren here goat may cruise among them for clays. as "our transport did, and not sight land ---so far are they apart. came back with a sack full of her precious dillies and pans. At half -mile intervals along that ravaged road, the Russian ser- geant and his party dug setts of 20 and more holes, burying only enough mines to make the sett deadly; the rest they topped with tin pots and plates that would ring dangerously to the German's probing rods . .. and delay them another half-hour. For a dummy takes as long as a real mine to investigate. The Germans came. They were delayed. And the Russian anti- tank troops arrived in time to wipe them out, body, soul and hardware. But you have nothing you pos- sess which is as precious to you as those dishes were to that Rus- siaai woman living in a shanty. What's your gift to the cause? Address it to the Canadian Aid to Russia Fund, 80 King Street West, Toronto. * * The Pacific is nearly twice as large as the North and South At- lantic tlantic combined, and it has more titan double their total amount of water. it contains more than half of all the water on r al•th, in- cluding oceans, seas, rivers and lakes. It is more than 9.000 miles long from Behring Strait to the Antarctic Circle; and it Is' 10,000 miles wide at the equator. It takes the .sun ten hours to cross it, or nearly one -halt of its day's jour- ney. It has the greatest known deeps ---the Philippine, east at the islands, and the Nero, off Guam, for instance, both going down six miles or more. Its average depth Is over two and a half miles. By contrast, even the latest Heilman 11l -boats cannot submerge with safety more than 600'feet, ICEA OF i 1•i E PRESS ARMY P.O. EFFICIENT Oran Sound Vilot Officer has just reentry revolved a letter with a record.iaiiecl to hills in England in October, 1941, it,ifol- lcwed him to Melba, Egypt, and back to Egypt to West Af- rica, 3-ric a, hack to England and then 10- CaCadeda where it caught up. 13ut it c ..ght up. The Army Post Of- fice. knows its business — Owen • Sound Sun -Times, GOOD ANSWER An old lady in Holland gave a clever answer 'ellen charged with listening to BBC broadcasts. "The Fuehrer," she said in ber own. defence, "announced he would be in. London in Tune, 1940. Since then I've listened to London every day to snake sure I wouldn't miss what he said when he got there." —Toronto Star, ALL IN ONE JUWIl' .A. 16 -year-old Toronto boy, missing since October 1, has hs been ls found in Georgia, where training with the First Canadian. Parachute Battalion. His is a Modern success story, He took off from his mother's apron strings and landed in parachute harness.- Windsor Star. OUR OWN ENEMY For high taxes, crowded street- cars, the shortage of gasoline, rubber, sugar, coffee and tea, we can blame Hitler if we like. But • . for nutter rationing we have only ourselves to blame.—Ottawa Citizen. THOUGHT FOR STRIKER When his son asks him, ten years hence. "What did you do in the war, Daddy?" surely no father will relish having to an- swer: "I went on strike in a war industry plant."—Stratford Bea- con -Herald. IT'S WORTH SAVING And don't take too much stocn. in that rumor that the .Germans are planning to scrap the Eiffel Tower. It's such an excellent jumping-off place for Adolf when the time comes.—Ottawa Citizen. WHAT A QUEER WORLD Sufficient evidence• of the dis- location of the world: The Japa- nese are just as busy making gasoline cut of rubber as we are snaking rubber out of gasoline. New York Sun. THE GERMAN HEELS News stories say the Germans are being rocked back on their heels. The heels, no doubt, are Hitler, Goering, Himmler and and C•oebels.—h•itchener Record. An instrument has been devel- oped that enables blind persons to make precision inspection of eertain machine products in war industries. • J e, ,:•Skeeters Bite To Aid Science Six men sititng for hours every day in. a sealed tent in Northern Australia encourage a cloud of mosquitoes to bite thein, prefer- ably , at the rate of 10 a minute. They are entomologists racing against time to develop a more ef- fective repellant of the malaria. - carrying anopheles mosquito• as the rainy season closes up north. A repellant must be discovered, manufactured in large quantities and distributed to the troops. The main objectives' of the research- ers are to protect the troops in the New Guinea jungles and over- come the .ever-present danger of malaria outbreak on the Aus- tralian mainland. Malaria can put out of action large numbers of troops for a prolonged period. Guerilla Warfare Within France Air Base Built In Three Days Engineers U s e Air -borne Roadhbuiiding Equipment Hance from North Africa, Brig. - Caen. • Stuart C. Godfrey disclosed ow weapon of his aviation en - dee; air -borne road -building equipment which makes it possible to conetriirt advanced air bases almost overnight. When it became nr eeeeary to establish advanced airdromes to support the action in Tunisia, Gen- eral Godfrey saki, a call was put in for the air -borne engineers. With their equipment, they were flown in cargo planes to points as close as possible to the selected sites, Within three days, Flying Fort- resses were taking off from the first base, and a second base was completed the next day. "Our Allies couldn't believe their eyes when they saw equipment be- ing unloaded from airplanes and going right to work," he reported. Portable Hangars This kind of forehandedness, he said, is going a long way toward solving the difficult supply prob- lem in North Africa, where for 1,000 miles there are only a single railroad and a narrow highway system along the coast. Among the equipment, specially designed for transportation in planes or gliders, are lightweight, portable hangars, a gasoline -oper- ated lighting unit for night con- struction work and lighting the •ileld for night flying, a roa.d.scraper which can be hauled by a jeep, ane rollers to he filled with water or sand. The air -borne aviation engineers were first organized last summer. Their training was so rapid, Gen- eral Stuart said, that within six months they were at work in Eng- land ngland and ready for the North Afri- can campaign, where most of their work has been pioneering. Tough Training "The idea behind them," he ex- plained, "is that they can get into fields captured by paratroops or on invaded islands right with the attack ;mits to make ready for air operations with a minimum of delay. "The saving of a few hours or days in the constructiou of such airdromes may have a great bear- ing on the outcome of a whole campaign. The air -borne aviation .ngineers go through a tough training course. They are chosen from the Air Forces personnel for their stamina and special skills. They must have both basic combat -and: engineering training Then they are instructed THE JA - ` EE-- Coinmentary on current I �venly Churchill, Roosevelt Meet In Africa Leaders Agree On 1943tr e y Prime .Minister Churchill and President Roosevelt, together with illicit tibias of staff. and other military and civil offic.'iale, have concluded a ten-day' couference at Casablanca, Morocco, in which a general prog:itanrne of military strategy for 1948 was worked •out. It liae lleme disclosed tbat the 'United dations would be -satisfied with nothing short of the enemy's unconditional surrender, excluding the possibility of anegotiated peace. This was qualified by Mr. itaaseveit s statement that the da structiuil of populations was not intended, but rather the destruc- tion of a lihilasoplly based on con- quest and terror.. General Giratel, High Commis - goner for French North Africa and General de Gaulle, leader of Fighting France, were also pre- sent at the conference. For obvious reasons, no details of the decisions reached at this � historic Casablanca conference have been given to the public. French Problem It is evident from the place chosen for this meeting, held with- in a few. hours' airplane flight from the African battlefront, that the Frencta ' problem was upper- most in the minds of both Mr. Churchill- and Mr. Roosevelt. Nei - tiler felt it sale to temporize long- er with a. situation which found French factions in an open quar- rel' and British ..and AmeriCau op- inion drifting dangerously apart. Forimiate]y Mr. Roosevelt and Me. Churchill have more in com- mon than bare most of their critics, on both sides of the At- lantic, when any question regard- ing France becomes the issue, says the New York Times. Both Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Churchill know France intimately, under- stand France, and cherish a long friendship with the French. people. Both are men of action, impatient with cords, and the disagree- ments growing out of words, when there is fighting to be done. Both passionately desire the re- birth of the French Republic. French Leaders Meet Sharing this faith, and meeting en French, soil, they could not ' fail to end the schism which has divided Frenchmen bearing arms against a common foe. The joint statement made by General de Gaulle and General Giraud•has in it all the essential elements of e.n understanding that will suffice un- til ntil the war is won. The two lead- ers have met. They have talked. They are 'in entire agreement on snee -,. •,_t e..,�,:chievean •which , is the liberty -or •tile •encl3 pet: 1e and the triumph of human liber- ties by the defeat of the enemy." They will attain this end "by the union of all Frenchmen fighting side In . side with their allies." This is as much as we need ask. Nor have we the right to ask more. We cannot expect Fenchmen, in France itee•lf or in any. part of the 'l•,pti�rrxtC'ttfays^!+wtn+.�•..�«n ^ ^:.• L�m.cL: equipment, special engineering Bourses, advanced training with such weapons as submachine guns, earbines and, rifles, and a. course in Commando exercises. SIDE GLANCES By George Clark ' Watch for reports of organized guerilla warfare within France not unlike that in Yugoslavia, though on n smaller scalesays Newsweek. Information leaking out of the ceuntry indicates that pIanncd resie•t:nic•e is already under way. DNebauded French soldiers have been turning up at prearrentee,l meeting places in re- mote sections, notably in auve erten, and the Pyrenees. These men have been responsible for several acts of sabotage that have slowed up traffic between France and Spain. There is_ one known in1tanee of a German infantry patrol's exchanging fire with night raiders and suffering casu- alties. Bluey and "1 don't Ishak \'on"re even trying to teen+ ire to "Careless Curley C 'ley of the, Anzacs .....Ahlp (WPaT COVE CL LEY GEIS Snt PAIR OG SOCKS SENT HIM PROM OM 1-10ME, , HE -14Ad PLENTY OFSOCKS altS. 60 NE, 6F -S HE A R TWa SOS // seed" eiks 10 `- S .'1'e;3.lrllyi' :al, r« • cit convietione ebote 111i) poi, is i1 needs of post-war Fronee>. We all• not expect the political di: e {'te- meuts which so deeply divided ed Pre-war France, and so 1henv:the ]y sapped the strength of Third Republic, to vanhh miiaen- loa ly overnight, merely bee .ns$e we would like to see well .French- men Freuu t -men united In every slope and every purpose. W'Itat we can ask, and what we can new expect, is that Frenchmen of every party and of every radion will subord- inate politic l disagreements 30 the immediate and ee eniial task of driving from the soil of Frames the arch -fiend, Hitler, who pois- ons and corrupts end to aur• nes the French people. A Fair Bargain We are entitled to believe that the agreement reached between General de Gaulle and General Gi- raud at Casablanca under the aus- pices of the chiefs of state of the two great English-speaking democ- racies carries this implication and this promise. Certainly it carries, on our Bide, a commitment from which we can- not escape with honor: a commits meet to use all our intelligence and all our power to make certalin that no post-war government is set up in France except in accnrd- ance with the freely expressed wishes of the French. people. This is the fair bargain signed at Casablanca.- • Complete Agreemgent Concerning the military' dle''is's ions reached at the conference we are not entitled to go beyond the language of the communique itself. But that language is crisp, confi- dent and promising. "Theatre by theatre," the exeire field of the war was surveyed, "and all resources were marshaled for more intensive prosecution ai the war by land, sea and air." There was "complete agreement * 1' * upon war plans and enter- prises to be undertaken during the campaign of 1943 against Ger- many, Italy and japan, with a view to drawing the utmost advantage from the markedly favorable turn of events at the close of 194:." t The Americans and British were si at all times in .close touch 3vitb. Stalin and with Chiang Kal-sieek- Attending the conference •dere_ field officers from the African campaign, fresh from experiences with the newest weapons and the latest tactics. The whole discus- sion took place in the reality of a present battlefield from which at- tacks may be launched in a half a kidese of Europe. The communique ends on a bus- inesslike note: "The President, the Prime Minister and the com- bined staffs, having completed their plans for the offensive cam- paigns of /943, have now cepaat- ed in order to put them into ao'ive and concerted execution," *. THE UNCONQU They Still Retaixt Their Sense of Humor Norwegians may at times think of Hitler when they sing ah. rt the "dreaded prince." Meanwhile in the NetherL.lias the able subjects of Quern W:.l" 1 - mina continue to find ways of drowning Wit Unwelcome .:zi speakers. When a crones does !lot peal its bicycle bens for this net, pos. it clay resort. to sae's clean -- fug and applause= tlatt the spes: • r gives tip in disgust. Bilt ;1 1.1,:"w t a P:vras•1. to halt a It.O1,..11 e1 in n ,., 1 \. Intimater i:tintinues to be a po- sent see'ret weapon of Europe's conquered peoples, and the grim Nazis have yet to find armor thick enough to ward off the thrusts of sar•'asnl and satire directed ia.galest them. In lda: w,ly :'eeenty the Quisling - !eta had 10 forbid all newspaper mention of ter;?o's rat -extermination ,'.ampai:ll. i'i:e leading journal lent enthusitietie support of the drive two yeare sge. with a• strong edi- etr'ialt 1: "t)nt V'+'rl1 the sealers W 3' o s :bsti- • n• se '� ,: 1,1 of t'a e ;11,er 3 • •. 1 '. i.- tails P:I•. ''.1 of f:11/11` -,r.. '.1 l i Saar COI," hi ' al .‘."•,•,1•:"'10.4 u, •'f the a n e: v,: .,u•1111x0 .til :i: -,•1 e 1''rl , ,.:llllu is,: e•. 1:. ,•.o,;,, N...:is flee. that the Ely Gurney (Australia) ....WADI PUTS T4'1E SOCKS Off' , �' 1 Sl_OVr.D IF I Qt'ShI''i- FIND i4 `ism sola NOTE STUCK DOV4M i61 TH. TOE •..., LOVE, FROM 1'165 &STEP.: T -C NA , NA : !4Aj/ "GOU'Lt. COLIGH THAT F1,A:. alllt�.-•.You cow.... IF IVE GOT To CHP1 E U' Fa pt A MO UTHYO.1/r 0