Word: maginot
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...refugees moved from one part of France to another-was at the rate of over 5,000 people per day. Since people have to carry baggage even in wartime and many of the refugees are old men, women or children, husky porters who might have been sent to the Maginot Line were still sweating in Paris stations...
...town hall, with their British colleagues. Munitions and food supply were said to have been the chief agenda. French mobilization was announced as having been finally completed (after 17 days of war), with 3,500,000 men under arms in a zone 15 to 30 miles deep behind the Maginot Line. Artillery pounding, mostly by night to escape the eyes of aviation, grew heavier and heavier. Also heavier grew the atmosphere of suspense as the Allies watched corresponding mobilization behind the Westwall...
...Jitteriest was the 998-square-mile Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, a peanut squeezed between the cracker-jaws of the Maginot Line and the Westwall. At Schengen, where Luxembourg tapers off to a point between the French and German borders, French and German machine gunners were separated by just 400 yards of no man's land, sat facing each other waiting for orders to fire. The Duchy ordered Schengen evacuated of all foreigners...
Unlike the solid, continuous Maginot Line, the Siegfried Position carries on the old Lossberg concept of defense in depth and swift counterattack from a protected rear. A break-through would be the signal for the great rear fortifications to open up with heavy artillery fire (spare gun-barrels as well as a large supply of munitions are cached in deep caverns connected by tunnel railways). Mobile troops, hitherto protected, would thrust out at the invading flanks. The cushion-&-spring force would be terrific...
...Chopin wrote the score for Poland's agony (see p. 25"), Walt Disney supplied a marching song for the Western Front. British Tommies reworded the work carol of the Seven Dwarfs in Snow White and, as they moved toward their posts in the Maginot Line last week, sang: "Heigh-ho, heigh...