Word: poilus
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...effects of it. They saw only one airplane encounter. They visited evacuated Saarbrücken, reported freight trains still hauling away coal, steel and manufacturing equipment (to the Ruhr) in full view of the French. On the Rhine they stood with German officers in full view of poilus on the other side fishing, sawing wood, washing clothes. They heard stories and saw signs of badinage between the lines. Net effect of what they wrote was to underscore Senator Borah's amazing crack about World War II being "phoney...
...Germany an unprecedented peace time mobilization of 2,000,000 men was under way. Division after division moved into the Limes Line, there to face the French poilus long ago shoved into the Maginot Line. Into East Prussia, already an armed camp, went more antiaircraft regiments, and a narrow strip along the border of Poland's vital southern indus trial area was closed to civilians. Reports persisted that a few Italian soldiers had also been brought up there, perhaps as a moral stimulant to their Nazi brothers...
...cinema theatres up & down the United Kingdom newsreels showing Adolf Hitler's troops rupturing the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Pact by marching into the Rhineland were received with murmurs of approval, applause and even cheers as last week opened. Newsreels of Poilus marching up to defend the French frontier were almost everywhere received by Britons in silence. Inquiring reporters for Baron Beaverbrook stopped 5,000 citizens to ask: "Do you on the whole prefer the French or the Germans?" The answer, blazoned next day in London's Daily Express, was that 21% had no preference...
Simultaneously some 30,000 French poilus were ordered by President Lebrun to man the elaborate concrete fortifications France has thrown up along her German Frontier...
Aside from Verdun, Hackenberg and Hochwald, the entire Sarre-Rhine frontier of France is studded every kilometre (nearly five-eighths of a mile) with "pillboxes" and groups of pillboxes, each one a small fort 30 ft. by 36 ft. and rooted 60 ft. deep in earth so that poilus in the lower chamber can rest in comfort. "Comfort," as Marshal Pétain has said, "is of utmost strategic importance. The combative efficiency of the soldier is at least doubled when he can recuperate in comfort." Ergo, nearly every pillbox is equipped with electric lights, electric stove, a well, beds...