Word: french
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...great "Red" hunt was ordered and by last week many Communist deputies and other prominent French Communists (plus many obscure ones) had been arrested, indicted or were being hunted. The most prominent ones were still in hiding, however. French Communist Secretary General Maurice Thorez, sent to the front with an engineer regiment, got a 24-hour furlough, took French leave and made a separate peace. Colorful Andre Marty, who once led a French Navy mutiny in the Black Sea and fought with the Spanish Loyalists, was thought to have disappeared to Russia. Deputy Jacques Duclos, an experienced fugitive from justice...
Last week rain fell continuously on the Western Front. In the 20-mile sector north of the Swiss border which faces the rocky fortress of Istein-Germany's "Gibraltar of the Rhine"-sodden French infantrymen came in from patrol to report that across the swelling river the German troops were busy in the flats. To stop this activity-whatever it was-French engineers had an answer that cost no lives, no ammunition. They closed the gates that drain Rhine water into the Rhine-Rhone Canal, let the river flood the flats...
...exhaust from trucks mired in the mud, the metallic jangle of troops in large numbers on the move. To the Allies this could mean only one thing: the Germans were moving up troops along the entire front, perhaps were readying for an attack in force. Into action went French artillery -slim 75s, big-mouthed 155s, even a few long-snouted railroad guns of big calibre, firing across the line for the first time since the war began...
This week it came-a small push along a four-mile front, but the first attack in force the Germans have made. It came along the northern flank through the Moselle Valley-an offensive that an official French communique described as "an attack supported by artillery fire." French outposts were slowly driven back toward the Maginot Line. From the rear came reinforcements and a counterattack and at the end of the day the German infantry had been stopped, at least for the time. But they had pushed back about a mile and a quarter into...
...boats sank the 14,115-ton French oil tanker Emile Miguet, their biggest merchant victim to date, and the 5,202-ton British freighter Heronspool. Few days later U-boats destroyed by raking, ruthless shellfire two more French and one British merchantman totaling 26,216 tons. Eight were killed and among the survivors brought ashore by rescue ships 30 wounded victims were on stretchers...