Dickenson County herald. [volume] (Clintwood, Va.) 1939-195?, 1943-01-07

am WTlIu1S CIl1S 1TOIl Tie rec
French radio station in Brazzaville,
three hundred miles up the Congo
in the African jungle. Here found
the ''Voice of Fighting France" the
worlds strangest broadcasting sta
ton.
Brazzaville is, first of all, the I'm
likeliest spot on earth for an i'm
portant radio station which rivals in
efficiency anything in London or
New York. Brazzaville is real Afri-
ca, some 300 miles up the Congo
river. It is steaming hot; the sun
is a sledge hammer; fever and
worse are always at hand.
Nobody in his widest moments
would have thought that Brazzaville
would be one of the worlds radio
capitals. 1t became so by chance,
by necessity, and by the efforts of
three men:
First, the brothers Desjardins--
Captain Francois, the elder, Lieu
tenant Pierre, the younger-both ex-
perienced French newspaper men.
When France fell they escaped to
London, joined De Gaulle as sol
diers. came with him on that IA
NOUS naval excursion that was
flop at Dakar, a success in the Cam
eroons and French Equatorial AT
RIGA.
Radio for Fighting France.
At Brazzaville, capital of the lat
ter, De Gaulle asked the two BROTH
ers to set up Service of Informal
tion,' a radio mouthpiece for Fight
ing France. The third man is a
mild little radio engineer named De-
froyenne, sort of Gallo Thomas
Edison, able to work all kinds of
miracles with meager equipment.
The Desjardins would tell him about
some impossibly intricate piece of
apparatus they needed. AS they
talked, Defroyenne would stare
dreamily out the window, apparent
ly not hearing word. Then he'd
wander off, still in a dream. Then
in a couple of days he'd be back
smiling shyly, with exactly what
they asked for. Maybe it was made
of bits from an old tractor and
sewing machine.
Their First Big Problem.
With such a man, the Desjardins
tackled their first big problem: to
make Radio Brazzaville talk. There
existed only a Morse Code station
and a feapower amateur station
with a midget so watts.
The code station had to be "modu-
lated''-that is, modified so that it
would transmit voice instead OF dots
and dashes. TIL Incompatible De-
froyenne vanished into the gloom Of
his workshop, dug into old boxes,
tore down other gadgets to find parts
and within a few weeks Radio Braz-
zaville somehow became voice sta
ton. Not perfect, but quite good
enough. The small amateur station
was boosted to $50 watts, seven
times it's original power. All this
work was done on night-and-day
schedule with almost no letup-ex-
cept once, when a 20-foot boa con-
strictor turned up in the radio sta
ton grounds and had to be shot
Assembling a Staff ON Congo River.
Not the least of the Desjardins'
tasks was to assemble a staff to
prepare the programs. It might
have been fairly easy in Paris or
London or New York, but not 800
miles up the Congo river. Yet some
how, somewhere, they collected one
of the strangest assortments of hui
man beings anywhere on the globe.
One used to teach English in French
schools; another taught law in Sim
gapore; another was Partisan bank
clerk; another a civil engineer. Still
another was gentle little man who
used to sell antiques. An American
girl reporter chucked job in Wash
ington and came. A French girl
from South Africa, and another
4 Y-xas