British
paratroops 'attack' with U.S.Army
by CHARLES WIGHTON
the only Dritish reporetr to take part in the present Anglo- American military exercises, the first time British troops have joined foreign troops in peace-time battle training.
GRAFENWOHR (German- the Russian security divisions
B
bore EL sinister resemblance to Czech Border), Sept. 10. fewer than 100 miles north in the RITISH andl American Soviet zone of Germany.
under D. A. O. R. Aghting
stoft ofilcers from troops,
operat- joint command for the Rhine Army headquarters,
ing in a joint "baby Shuer" in first time since the end of the
former Wehrmacht training Grafenwohr, arc taking war, are hitting back at strong area at
the Joint ly entrenched forces of an part in the control of "aggressor" who, at dawn operation, yesterday, "invaded" the United States zóne of Germany. By nightfall British and
Ind pushed can troops
alght eight milen, within
bilis of the rolling Curtain" Czech border. This is the beginning of a British-Amer been grand. It is impossible to tell can fle-up in a ten-day, large-scale manoeuvre.
reen
At the end of the Arsi day's Aghting one of the British Яtaff efficers Bald; "We reckoned WC Ameri- knew a good den about fighting forward in Palestine, but we have cec-
of the tainly learned a great
deal from "Iron the Americans in
past days. Our American allies
the
THE HONGKONG TELEGRAPH,
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 25, 1948.
by” GILES
EVER BEEN
*LINE SHOOTING' UP TO DATE
RECRUITING OFFICE
BATTLE OF BRITAIN WEEK
"Out we used to go¬knock orf a couple of 'undred 'Einkels-nip back for
few have
orf we went again-down go another load of 'Einkels..."
that two armies are taking part. They might be one."
have one
soldiers The Belfish Units in the 1.200-strong British task force now nghting as part of grumble. They are getikig only 20 the historie American First Divi cents a day while in the American alon, are the red-bereted Oghters zone-just enough to buy coffer and of the First Battalion Parachute doughnuts. or Regiment, an armoured force of the American snack bar. 3rd King's Own Hussars and the
Royal Horse Guards, and support- Artillery, ing Royal
THE
A hot do In 211
Rumours start!
HE sergeants get ten cents more, and officers are getting 60 cents Gid.-to entertain their
Royal En- gineers, and Royal Signals.
American stair oficers who describe the Red Devils as "the a day-25
inest troops we have ever seen American friends.
"followed
move from
of the Lubeck border
quick cup of char-
DOWN A SALT MINE?
E
asks BERNARD WICKSTEED
VER been down a salt"mino? Right, let's do
it. We've no choice about which one it's to be because there is only one. At least only one
in England still working.
It is called the Meadow Bank Mine in Cheshire and by a bit of luck I know the man who runs it. We went to school together.
A salt mine is nothing like I thought it was.. I don't know about you, but I always pictured it
as a great white cavern of kitchen salt which you cut into blocks and sent to the surface, to be wrapped in brown paper.
But that is all wrong. The salt in a salt mine doesn't look like household sålt at all. It is rock salt which is harder than coal, and brown. To get it, you go down a shaft na you do in a coal mine, but it is only about four feet square and in the old days when they used ponies under- ground they had to tie the animals up and lower them down tail first.
The shaft is 450 feet deep-about three times the length of Nelson's Column-and it takes GO seconds to go'down. When you step out of the cage you are in the middle of a place that looks like the crypt of a gigantic cathedral.
Velvet Glove Behind The Iron Curtain: THIRD AND LAST ARTICLE
Hungary's
3-Year
Plan
Leans On Shock Workers
HEREVER you look in
Rec
Budapest you colourful slogans boost- ing Hungary's Three-Year
All the officers and men of ic in a fatline of soklering." sald
feel that with British contingent the present experiments
small Bum Involved they the recent meeting In Berlin be such
been given a more tween General Clay and Licut. might have
iberal allocation of cenis-to General Sir Charles Keightley,
words of a commanding. B. A. O. R.
prevent them, in the
"living on Exercise "Normal"
paratrooper is a mock Glasgow war-but According to operational the charity of the G."
With the 700-mile orders the "Eastern #ggressor
tosk force forces" now belug held south of British the former Wagner Festival town on the Baltic to the Czech of Bayreuth, are only the screen rumours spread rapidly among the
Germans. of the main invading army.
British armoured cars Plan. While combined British
As the and
seen in paratroops-never American defence forces "battle" and
Plan Well "Three-Year the main in Bavaria before-rolled through the along the harders.
villages, German border
"The Three to be racing sleepy vaders are supposed
discussed Being," says one. westward 10 capture The new the working population
Year Plan Is Your Plan, Work West German capital of Frank- some fantastic theories:- fort--and possibly the Channel
A joint British-American for it." And on the bulletin
up to 'break into force forming ports.
the Russian board at the Goldberger textile and Czechoslovakla
Germany to zone of
reinforce factory at Obuda, in the out- Berlin from the south;
2. A British-American ormy in skirts: "Dear. Competitor, here 500 we have a Working Competi- roared joint advance along invading inlle Iron Curtain as the
tion, not a Chatting Competi- force-represented by a single the Baltic to the Alps.
tion."
'Baby SHAEF'
TUGHTER-BOMBERS of the Ame-
elean Army Air Force overhead today
American
once-military
the frontier from
to show that the combat team-look up" Which goes
brains of the Ger- position along the invasion line.
with man populace have deserted them! uniform
invaders The operation goes on.
In olive-green
yellow
the epilettes.
LUCK
and 2,500 ways of
D%
thinking
about it
By BERNARD DREW
O you believe that 13 is an peacock's feather fan, and sent her
unlucky number, do you this note in the interval:
"For God's sake, take that pea-
avoid walking under a ladder,
What burglars say
The Three-Year Plan is de- coal output signed to increase
38 percent, machinery produc- tion 168 percent, power 43 percent, chemical products 40 percent. Its aim is to improve the prowar living standard by 14 percent. Every effort is being made to reach these goals in two-and-a-half years: Au- thorities say proudly that coal, iron and steel production al-
have ready
passed prewar levels.
to
in Monuments, like this one Budapest, plus banners and slogans, remind Hungarinus of Three-Year-Plan
BY ROSETTE HARGROVE
car.
many
were
The ceiling is 20 feet high and all round you
re massive pillars to hold it up. And all of it is carved out of salt-the floor, the walls, the pillars and the root
They held a dance here once, but It took so long to get the guests down the shaft that the drst ones last barel were leaving before the arrived.
107 YEARS OLD
1
ABOUT a million tons of rock salt
have been taken out since the mine was opened 107 years ago. But there is still about 1,500,000,000 tons lett. This is good, nows for cows, because they are among the chief consumers of rock salt.
They'd smack their lips if they could be with us now and see the luscious
of it trundled lumps roofs. a work thatched In each enterprise
along in
in trucks. A lot of it is on Front
and New the way to Australia is fixed. Those brightened by flowers. ing "norm"
hidden by high Zealand, where they do not have who produce more get higher yards were
wooden fences. Men and women any tall mines.
-First it is mined .111 Cheshire, pay in proportion. A "shock were in the fields; only grand-
to the shipped
Antipodes worker" is one who produces mothers stayed at home
to for cows to lick, and Anolly, 13 more than 35 percent above watch babies. Flocks of geese, minute constituents of butter und
Where his norm. His rating as shock tended by barefooted small girls heet, some of it comes back again. does All this salt in Cheshire come
from?
did How worker is good for three or women, scattered before our
it get there? About 150 million months; he gets a book,
years ago when birda ad Icoth were making their medal, the privilege of free
We found the ex-serfs free to and lobsters
part first appearance, the greater An ex- answer questions. baths, theatre, sports, and the
of red Britain
a desert like. "Work heroes," who pro- prisoner of war, just back from rock, sandstorms and salt lakes. duce, even better than "shock Russia, explained that the re- The biggest of the lakes stretched from what is now Northern distribution of land was casual, feeland, past the of the
uip
iale ct. workers," get money awards.
so that while his wife had been)
Cheshire. down into Free medical care is provid- given two acres, only one was Because of the droughts It was ed, and a day nursery where fit to cultivate. There was no always drying up and the salt in children from six weeks to six pool of equipment, but he didn't the water was left on the bottom.
for
one mattered much to while think
PREHISTORIC RAIN years
him. mothers are at work. They are has almost an aversion to those days, because the
The Hungarian peasant
THERE were gigantic tides clothed and fed four times a
machinery. day without charge. Layettes are provided for new babies.
are cared
11
NO SUNDAY DRESS
Mon
and
wa's
in
moot
was
and nearer than it is now,
broke from time to time the sea
a now supply in again with
of look ot water and salt, If you When we visited the Gold-
the rock face where the miners by the berger nursery the three-to-six
GRANDMOTHER caring for four are working you can tell
of ind salt colour
what the year group was having its mid- A
or Ave youngsters, in what had colo!
weather was like 150 million years All the tots rose, been serf quarters on a big estate, day meal.
ago. cock fan out of the theatre to pre-
greeted us with the Communist was cooking the mid-day meal of corni Where it is dark brown it means or say "Hero's luck" when a vent a disaster."
When this plan is ended, black cat crosses your path?
Friday has a strong hold over the | Five-Year Plan with new a food co-operative she can buy clenched flat salute, shouted meal mush, which would be served there was a lot of rain when it superstitious. If so you share in one of tho
at least ten to 15 percent under "Forward," and went back to with milk. Such quarters consist of formed because plenty of mud got In-1031 the sailings of two targets is to be started. three most widely held supersil-
Atlantic iners
She eating a dish of marrow in thick a small kitchen and one bedroom, mixed with the salt. And when a were delayed on
regular market prices.
however big the family. Men and cow licks a-particularly pure lump of rock salt her extra enjoyment is tions.
"It Was necessary can buy textile material at sauce, with a hunk of sausage women are ragged. This old woman due to a drought, in Triassic times. A woman who once objected in Friday night till one minute after the passengers' re-
Plan,"
sold she couldn't go to church be-
Wes 50 establish a Three-Year
Finally, there
much the High Court Unt her house had midnight-at
overtime, All looked healthier and better cost. If she works
that the lake didn't go dry been numbered 13 had it changed quest.
said a government spokesman, to 120-but she died next day.
and that was the end Austrin.
though Bald that
they kept geese any more, A famous High Court judge also
According to the pollee. few bur."because war destruction and she is paid a bonus of 25 per- clothed than the children in cause she had no Sunday dress. Shoirnin held strongly
Somehow I always connect salt to the superstition.
damage had brought living cent for the first two hours,
Coupled with the Three-Year they seldom ate one because they of the salt. and
Some burglars belleve that a standards to a level so low that 60 percent for the next two,
Plan is a programme of agricul. could be sold for money, and meat mines with slavery, but this one (Rider
enough place to was too expensive to buy.
seems a pleasant 10%). piece of coal carried in the pocket
work. There is an even tempera- Some day it is published recently, the authors, E. will enable them to defy authority. recovery, could not be left to and so on-plus 'a free meal.
tural reform.
In this community sugar beets are turo of 84-50 degrees F. summer and M. A. Radford. tell us that. Scotland Yardi once vouched for natural forces."
Some workers get special supposed to provide the peasants. when a barrister, he refused any the prevalence of this strange be brief marked 13 guineas.
blowing the privileges. A rallway worker, with cheap farming equipment, the big crop. For every hundred and winter, the air is dry and you When a solicitor who knew him
refuse to COTTON AND RAYON for instance, gets free or low- artificial fertiliser, clothes and weight of beets taken to the nearby can smoke without well marked a brief "Twelve and
During the war It was used for another" it was returned.
cost travel. If he works 200 shoes. These we saw on a visit refinery, they get 6.6 pounds of place up.
storing documents. Sanitation la primitive. Water How many salt miners are there. THE Goldberger plant employs hours a month, and has a cer-
60. Forty is no in from
England? Exactly a well. that he has been em-
auch benefits yet.
meeting place, not to mention a of them work on the day shift and Most of the cottages looked movie theatre.. There is only one forty at night. Between them they produce about 50,000 tons of rock freshly whitewashed, some had radio for the entire community.
salt a year.
In the "Encyclopaedia of Supersil- glaries take place on a Friday.
tions"
Co.,
'Ranji's' black cat
Ranjitsinh,
picce
lief.
Barmaids sometimes change a five-shilling separate shillings.
They say that if they do some member of the staff will ba din-
Indian inissed before the węck is out. the great prince-cricketer, averred, that u
650 women
and
about tificate
Most popular superstition in rural 100 men. It was nationalised ployed more than three years, black cat twice won n. müteh for areas is that of "Telling the bees" Surrey in 1905. And seeing one at when a member of the family dies. in August 1947, along with he is not docked, for holidays
Otherwise, it is, sail, the becs will either die or fly away. In 1945 bany industry mines and when he doesn't work.
banks. Its monthly output, in about 2,700,000 yards of cotton Besides and rayon goods. supplying the domestic market, go to Russin
a shooting party he belloved gun- ranteed a good bag.
the bees Charles I., It is said, was arrested a bride stopped to tell
black she was married. the day after his favourite
This belief is founded on the Why did W. G. Graco always superstition that a bee is the soul bat first He believed that if he of n death person.
ent died.
went in to bat at an even number The custom among. sallore of quantities of the cloth wearing ear-rings originated be- Switzerland, England,
he would not make runs.
Another cricket superstition: If
will soon be bowled.
their cause
forefathers
believed
a batsman takes guard twice ho they would be saved from drown and metropolitan France. The
Ing.
women
One of the most popular supor The reason why some stitions among smokers Ip, that of carry an acorn in their bag "to be the "third light" from one match. blessed with perpetual youth has
to have never been fathomed. This belief is thought been born in the Boer War, It was said that Boer snipers would spal the flame by the time the third man accepted it.
Stage folks beliefs
The stage has contributed inrgely
to our 2,500 superstitions.
Here are some of them. [-----
The tog (last line of a play). should never be sald af rehearsals. Whistling in a theatre will bring
bad luck. Always left foot first.
dressing-room
icave a Never hang pictures, on n' dress ing-room door.
Only artificial flowers should bo worn on the stage.
Tostl's "Good-bye"
hummed. In
mora
The falling leaf There aro
superstitions about alleged cures for aliments than any other subject.
greatest problem is dyes, which used to come from 1. G. Farben and now must be imported from the U.S. and Switzerland. Russin supplies raw cotton.
Attractive 21-year-old Roun of the one A Durham Bovin Boy inquired Kelascheck is
the among whether sucking coal was a cure "shock workers" some of his for heartburn,
women. She had worked as a colleagues had suggested,
Another old myth is: "If you checker for two years without catch a falling leat in your hand making a mistake. Her reward. in the autumn you will be free
was a month's vacation at an- from colds all the winter."
as
country
all
ox-
Only two years Dgo an elderly Albanian resort with
woman were seen in man and Hyde Park to calch ook-leaves.penses paid. They said the saying was true.
Rosa works from seven-in the In some parts of the children suffering from measles morning to fivò at night, 48 and other childish complaints are hours a week, for 160 forints "Cinderella" is one of the luckiest still given roast mice as a curo. pantomimes; "Robin Hood" and
There is no evidence that falling about US$14.50. For 27 conts
In the Babes in the Wood" unlucky dnes. pictures presage a death
Irving, playing "Othello," saw, a family-but thousands out believe a week she gota, a hot_midday meal at the plant canteen. At woman in the stalls...carrying ait
n theatre will bring ill-luck.
to Golgamacan, about 40 miles from here, have received no
Bugar.
comca
· «ghack-worker" Girl workers, like this one iria textile factory, are, on an equal footing witia meni kot special privileges for prodies Ing: 35 percenk shove・ "nerari.
7
There
Peasant Land reform has given amali farmern like this old man a few acres more land, but faw other benefits. The peasant who owns. a.....
Sunday: sulj ie ́s rarity
It is so hard that you
chisel it out with
have to blast it.
î
cannot *pick. You
coal cutting First they use, a machine and dig away above and below, the section they are going to blast. Then they punch a row of holes with those pucunfatic drills that are used for digging up roads. The explosive, it stuffed in und everybody stands back while it is detonated...
THE BIG BANG TOLD your hat now. Here it goes Hwith a roar.
The rock that took so many thousands of years to accumulate comes crashing down of seconds and the in a couple explosion goes rumbling round the
ic vaulted acres us searching for somewhere to out.
Ret
The whole place vibrates for ton or afteen seconds, and when it's quiet again there, is enough rock salt lying on the Aborto keep thousands of cows contented.
·OL. this You mustn't confuse with the kind of salt and I take with our meals. That, too, comes from those Cheshire salt, bods, but is brought up na brines and not rock
hat you
But enough of that We'll go to the top again now and drop in at one of those half-timbered Cheshire pubs All this, think, 'about sait makes you so thirsty.