General Huntziger admitted that it had been extremely difficult at first to persuade his troops of the comparative harmlessness of the dive bombers and mentioned the fact that in the first thirteen days of the German attack his troops had been overwhelmed and he had lost fifty per cent of his effectives, more than ninety per cent of whom were captured, but he believed that now the troops were experienced and could not be frightened as they were at first. As we were soon to observe, the French troops never did get used to the dive bomber which is truly the most terrifying weapon ever invented. General Huntziger compared it to a locomotive with its whistle wide open falling upon you from the sky. “You are certain it is coming just for you,” the General said, “and you believe it is not merely going to drop bombs upon you, but you are sure the plane itself is going to crash upon you and leave you smashed like a beetle.” The noise of the dive bomber is its most terrifying quality. An ordinary airplane diving makes a loud rushing noise familiar to everyone nowadays, but many of the German dive bombers were equipped with sirens attached to loud-speakers, so that when they dived each plane screamed with the noise of a score of ordinary diving planes. In addition to that they were often equipped with screaming bombs. General Touchon, commander of the Sixth Army, showed me one at his headquarters. It had four whistles, each about the size of a cannon cracker, in the vanes of its tail. They made each falling bomb sound as loud as four American locomotives with the whistles open. “But,” General Huntziger said, “all you have to do is to realize that noise doesn’t hurt anyone, and I have explained that to my soldiers and from now on they will stand firm.” Huntziger gave me a copy of his orders of the day. I cannot read it even now without feeling the terrible weight of despair that settled upon all of us as we realized that the end of France was near. It is dated May 18, 1940 and begins: “The war has commenced,”--it was to be all over in exactly thirty days--“and, in order to win, the enemy always attacks your morale. In this first shock, his tactic, his ruses of warfare and his weapons have but one object, _to demoralize you_. The enemy is reckoning only upon fighting you with fright. It is necessary therefore that you know this. “Know also that the massive bombardments of the enemy aviation, no matter how impressive they are, make few victims, as you may have already noted. You know the total lost; they are a minimum. Take refuge when the enemy aircraft passes and immediately afterward take up again your combat post. Never forget our aviation protects you. _Even when you cannot see it._ Know that our airplanes have knocked down more than a thousand enemy machines in less than eight days and that among the enemy our bombers are giving blow for blow.