Evening star., 1939-11-19

Wnen tnlS correspondent asked gen.
eral staff officer whether any one man
had designed the system he replied
laughingly, my dear sir, in no single
human breast does as much sadism re-
pose as is manifested in this defense
system"
Supposing by some unforeseen chance
an enemy should sneak past the threat
ening guns of bunker or an armored
bastion and try to enter one of these
miniature Notifications, what would his
fate conceivably be?
In the first place, as he tried to go in
side by the little steel door, he would
find machine gun leveled straight at
him by soldier whose sole duty is that
OF eyeing every person entering.
Trap Door May Yawn.
Likely as not the enemy would get no
further. For, even, supposing that the
machine gun failed-all the soldier needs
to do is to push button, whereupon a
trap door opens and the enemy drops
into dark hole.
In other words, the German general
staff has reverted to the medieval idea
OF the drawbridge as an approach to a
fortress or castle-a contraption that
could be pulled up when the enemy tried
to enter.
But supposing that both machine gun
and trapdoor are out of commission, or
that SO many enemies enter singly more
than one cannot crowd through the steel
door at time) as to exhaust the ma
chine guns ammunition: Looking some
10 or 20 feet to his right or left along
the passage way that connects this par
ticular bunker with the next one, the
enemy will again find a machine gun
planted, ready to take care of him.
There are said to be over 10000 bunk
ers, "panzerwerke" or armor-plated bas-
tions, and other miniature Notifications
along the West Wall. The result Is that
one sees comparatively few soldiers when
one is permitted to tour this forbidden
area under military guidance.
Fact is that the troops have started on
| large scale underground life and are
nowhere maSsed in the open. Only
further inland-the West Wall extends
back for about 35 miles in four zones,
two for artillery and infantry and two
for anti-aircraft batteries-does one see
larger units. They are the men who must
at regular intervals relieve the soldiers
in the subterranean Notifications.
Noise Is Ear-Splitting.
For the present, the men are changed
every week or two weeks. Should artil-
lery operations by the French begin in
earnest, the changes will probably have
to be far more frequent. For, one diff
Guilty which the general staff seems to
have been unable to overcome is that
of the terrific noise inside, which a con-
tinuous spit-fre of shells against any
| one bastion makes.
Placards on the walls of the bunkers
keep hammering into the soldiers con-
sciousness that he must not take the
terrific noise seriously-the bunker is
bomb and shell proof but the outside
noise is magnified inside many times.
| One problem with which the German
high command-and presumably the
| French likewise-must face is that of
determining what to do with small
| groups of men who are dependent upon
| each other in an underground COM
munity, whose life at present is ex-
| tremely monotonous and in the event
| of an offensive is likely to be nerve
| racking.
However great the improvement of
these steel and concrete bunkers may
| be over the trenches of the World War,
the fact remains that it Is an abnormal