European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - June 13, 1994, Darmstadt, Hesse A c y. A Channel Challenge it will take More than a Tunnel to unite English and French file British and French diggers celebrate atop a service train in 1990. Quot France is a dog Hole and it no the tread of Man s a William Shakespeare All s Well that ends Well Quot the English Are the most barbarous people in the . A Stendhal 19th Century French novelist by Karin Davies the associated press he English Are slovenly Drunken Small minded and crude inordinately fond of their pets stutter and a re sexually confused. The French Are self important rude spineless strutting provincials. Their food is overrated and they Are Quot fond of scent but Are strangers to . The French and the English How they love to loathe each other. And an entente cordiale is unlikely to follow the first passengers through the $15 billion Channel Tunnel when it opens to passengers so me time this summer. A Quot As Long As we Don t physically fight then it s Good to keep Turold Battles Between nations going. And i Hope the Channel Tunnel does not Stop it Quot said the French author of a recent Book to be done with the English. When the Channel will open to the common Man is still anyone s guess a mid August with full service some time in september is among the latest. It was officially inaugurated last month by Queen Elizabeth ii and Francois Mitterrand president of France. Eur Tunnel the operating company says it has taken longer than expected to Check out All the systems and equipment developed for the twin rail tunnels under the English Channel. The tunnels each 31.4 Miles Long open behind the ruins of world War ii German coastal defences near Calais and in the English town of Folkestone near Dover s famous White Cliffs. They will carry High Speed trains freights and shuttles transporting cars and trucks in Competition with seagoing ferries. Operators of the Eurosia trains which will make the London Paris trip in three hours Hope to take business from airlines. The Channel ends the historic Britain land isolation expressed in the old joke Quot fog in the Channel. Europe Cut England s educated classes Are comfortable with All things French from language to philosophers but the English who Cross the Channel to buy vast quantities of Beer on the cheap find Little else to Admire. They follow the Sun the tabloid whose headline insults have included Quot hop off you frogs Quot and Quot up yours Dolors Quot a a swipe at Jacques Dolors the French president of the european Union commission. The French alternate Between ask King British Loutis Ness a Quot a la Langlais Quot a and simply ignoring London England Angush Tunnel l Calais France provocations which can be the greatest insult of All. Quot there Are English who come and drink and English who come to drink Quot said mayor Jean Muse let of Boulogne a ferry port that has seen its share of loud English drunks. Quot those who come of drink Are a bit across the Channel in Dover Roger Madge a local official is trying to attract More French tourists. Quot the French see us As an exotic people Quot he said. Quot we drive on the wrong Side of the Road and eat strange coloured the English Call the French Quot frogs Quot because of their taste for the legs of amphibians. To the French the English Are Quot Rose ifs Quot a reference to their preferred sunday dinner and a tendency to be fatty and White until exposed to. Heat when they turn Pink. Language is used in other insulting ways. Quot Les Langlais qui Arri vent Quot the English Are coming Quot is a French expression for menstruation. A Frenchman s Quot Filer a i a Glaise Quot and a briton s Quot to take French leave Quot both mean to go awol. To be done with the English was written by a French academic hiding behind the pen name Chan eclair the boastful cockerel that symbolizes the French ego. He lambasted the English As slovenly Drunken inefficient crude and unclean and says they Are inordinately fond of pets Quot with whom they feel on an even he also says the English do not have sex they have unnatural practices. Edith Cresson later a Premier of France was quoted in a British newspaper in 1.991 As saying one fourth of British men were homosexuals. , Gill in a mischievous essay in the sunday times responded Quot the French have always had a vastly inflated View of themselves and they Are having to come to terms with the fact that the rest of the world views them As funny ill mannered strutting Little Iii the euro Star train carrying the English delegation to the Channel s official opening leaves the new Waterloo International station in London. A crossing the Channel a test for All Ages by Patrick Mcdowell the associated press t s like climbing mount Everest or putting a Man on the Moon. Tunnelling under the English Channel is the ultimate assault on a strip of water that tested conquerors and daredevils for centuries. The last bit of what is now Britain pulled away from Mainland Europe about 8,000 years ago. For the last 200, imaginative men have tried to reverse nature s verdict and re create a land link. A Albert Mathieu Favier an Engineer proposed a Tunnel to the French emperor in 1802. Horses would have pulled carriages through it and air would have entered through then at War with England was amused. In subsequent decades engineers Drew plans for a Tunnel built of Metai tubes an arched conc Rifle passageway mounted on the sea bed and Bridges of various sorts. In the 1870s, France and Britain actually started drilling a Tunnel with steam driven . A the project was abandoned when the British had second thoughts about giving europeans easier Access to their tight Little Island Hitler s bombers diminished the Channel s role As a line of defense and Britain dropped military objections to a Tunnel in 1956. After years of on again off again planning digging be Gan in 1987 and was finished four years later. A French postman left passes a letter to a British counterpart a who teas of carry it through the Tunnel to England a at a ceremony earlier this year. Getting the Best of the English Channel has been a Challenge through the Ages. Caesar s legions William the conqueror s Norman knights and the Allied armies on a Day All overcame logistical nightmares and erratic weather to launch successful invasions across it a a in 1588, the luckless Spanish Armada failed. The first person to swim the Channel was Jean Marie Saletti a French prisoner of War who escaped from England to France in 1815. Matthew Webb a Royal Navy Captain was the second. In 1875, he swam to Calais from Dover in 21 hours 45 minutes. A Waves knocked him so far off course that he covered 38 Miles nearly double the straight distance. Gertrude Ederle was the first successful woman swimmer making it from France to England in 1926, another american Florence Chadwick in 1951, was the first woman to Cross in the opposite direction. John Jeffries an american and Jean Pierre Blanchard of France were the first to Fly Over the Channel soaring from Dover to the Guines Forest in France on july 1, 1785, in a hot air balloon. French aviation Pioneer Louis Bleriot in a monoplane he built himself piloted the first heavier than air machine across on july 25, 1909. More fanciful Crossings have been made in amphibious cars on air mattresses and water skis and with peddled and solar powered aircraft. Inside the Channel facts and figures on the Tunnel under the English Channel a layout a three tunnels bored 130 feet under Chalk seabed for 31.4 Miles Between Calais France and Folkestone England two main tunnels with service Tunnel Between carry one Way Rati piggyback service a cars and trucks carried by rail make crossing in 35 minutes about an hour less than by ferry passengers remain in. Vehicles. A High Speed trains a pans London run scheduled to take three hours and Brussels London a Quarter hour longer a delays a originally scheduled to open in March 1993, but delayed several limes by disputes with contractors and technical problems with the shuttles that will carry cars and trucks. A. A Cost a original estimate was $7.2 billion at current Exchange rates but Cost to Date is around $15 billion and officials Are expected to ask investors for another $1.5 billion this year. Concessions to eur Tunnel the operator extended from 55 years to 65 so it can earn Back the Money and turn n profit. A How built a eleven giant Boring machines guided by satellites dug the passages working from december 1987 to mid-1991 main Tunnel borers weighed More than 1,000 tons were 690 feet Long 28 feet High and Laid Concrete lining behind them. Borers could not be removed and were dismantled or dug their own Graves to the Side. A previous attempts a Napoleon s engineers drafted Tunnel plan in 1802, but Britain and France were at War. From 1880-83, galleries actually dug by steam driven machines on both sides. Work stopped by British who had second thoughts about possible invasion. A the associated press two workers install a plaque in front of the head of a Drill used to dig the Tunnel. The stars and stripes monday june 13, 1994 the 5tars and stripes 17
