Foreign News: Surplus Liquidators

Five U.S. Army trucks, manned by unguarded German P.W.s, rumbled along Paris’ Champs Elysées. Watching the procession amid indifferent French boulevardiers, a U.S. captain growled: “It’s got so the American Army in France is practically run by Heinie prisoners.”

Xenophobic Frenchmen, who last year wailed over the excessive number of Américains in their country, now grumble that there are not enough G.I.s to escort the Boches. Last week, French indignation reached a new high near Reims, when several hundred demonstrators protested against Nazi P.W. insolence and arrogance. Down came a U.S Army roadside sign which gave convoy instructions in English and German; up went a laconic, patriotic substitute: “Reims, territoire français!”

As the number of G.I. personnel in France, Belgium and Holland decreased in response to demands to “bring the boys home,” P.W.s have become indispensable. Ninety percent of the personnel handling, repairing, conserving and hauling the hundreds of million dollars’ worth of U.S. surplus material are now German P.W.s. Through error, the names of P.W.s even sneaked into the recent telephone directory of Western Base Section Headquarters in Paris. The directory was quickly withdrawn and purged.

Inadequately guarded P.W.s have been stealing and reselling surplus material at an officially estimated minimum rate of $1 million a month, with single transactions running as high as 500,000 francs. Proceeds go into cigarets and drinks or into buying false identity cards for use in underground transportation back to Germany.

U.S. Army authorities admit there is little they can do about it, but last week they breathed a deep sigh of relief. Under the terms of the French loan, all surplus property in French depots is to be turned over to France within the next three months. Result: a whacking percentage of the current total of 150,000 P.W.s in the Western Base will either be sent back to Germany or placed under French jurisdiction.