Evening star., 1940-03-05
Reporters Are Given
Plan Of Escape
From Soviet Planes
Told to Dive for Woods
If Attack Is Made
From Front
BY WILLIAM L. WHITE.

ON THE ARCTIC CIRCLE
FRONT.-We turned north out of
Rovaniemi and presently the road
entered forest, and some place
near the town We passed over the
Arctic Circle. The forest was spruce,
heavy with snow, and very beautiful
in the brilliant light of full moon,
but the cold was bitter even under
the thick robe of reindeer hide. The
lieutenant in the front seat kept
his sub-machine gun between his
knees. 1 kept mine on my lap,
propping its long magazine against
the door handle of the car to keep
1t from sliding. 1t had no safety
catch and felt little easier when
the muzzle was pointing out. the car
window.
The lieutenant said we should not
look at the scenery in the moonlight
now, but should try to get some
sleep, since we had only two hours
of it before starting He said that
as we neared the front we should
not sleep, because then there would
be danger of meeting a Russian
patrol, and we should be wide awake
to get out of the car, or to handle
our guns.
He also said that there would be
no Russian planes out until dawn,
but if anything delayed us we might
meet some, and we should know
If one approached us in front be-
cause we could see it through the
windshield.
Plan of Escape.
In that case we should get out of
the car and fun for the woods at
the side of the road. But if it
approached us from behind, he said
we might do what we liked, because
then we would not know it was
coming until the machine-gun
bullets started coming through the
car. In that case, he said, we were
free to do what we liked. Some
preferred to keep on driving
Another school of thought favored
stopping the car and getting out
and trying to get under it. But, he
said, if a plane came UP behind it
did not really matter what we did,
because what happened to us would
largely depend on luck rather than
skill.
Because our feet were still warm it
was possible to get about three hours
sleep before dawn. which started to
break about o'clock with a faint
grey streak along the southeastern
horizon. In American we would have
looked at this and said the sun will
be up in half an hour. But here
above the Arctic Circle that faint
gray steark along the southeastern
for about three hours, and also moves
slowly south. At about 10 o'clock you
are sure dawn is coming instantly,
for the gray gives way to pink and
golden dawn clouds.
Sun Never Rises.
But these, instead of lasting 10
minutes, last two hours, and the sun
appears in the sky-just rim of it
over the horizon, at noon. But it
never rises. The strip of yellow rim
appears due south, and it moves
slowly westward along dawn clouds
above 1t, and at about 2 o'clock in
the afternoon it finally dips back
under the horizon, still travelling
from south to west, and it is not COM
pletely dark until S in the after
noon.
We were awake for this first dawn
at 7, and now we got the machine
you may think you are ever mindful
of the manifold moods and ever
changing aspects of nature, but I
assure you that you have never really
looked at forest with care until
you have set in the back seat of an
automobile with a cold sub-machine
gun on your knees peering through
the snow covered pines, to make sure
that you see Russian patrol ahead
before it sees you.