WAR TOPICS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 4, Issue 132, 21 July 1941, Page 6

WAR TOPICS

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SOVIET MARSHALS COMMANDERS OF THREE SECTORS

ALT, VETERANS IN WARFARE Moscow has announced the division of the long Russian front into three sectors—North, Central and South — with a commander for each. Marshal Voroshilov takes the north, including probably Leningrad: Marshal TimosUenko the centre, and Marshal Butlenny the south. These are all tried soldiers, veterans of the Great War or with military leadership in the Russian Civil War. Marshal Klementi Voroshilov is probably the best known of the three. He was Stalin's right-hand man in the great reorganisation of Russia's defences and fully anticipated the possibility of the present conflict. Himself of humble birth, and son of a railway watchman, he worked in the coal mines at the age of seven and taught himself to read at twelve. He is now in his sixtieth year. It was one of his cliiof aims since, in 1925, lie succeeded Mikhail Frunze as President of the Military Council and Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs, to improve the education of the masses, .and, particularly, of the Red Army. Pic became supreme in Russia's War Council under Stalin after the "purge," which removed many of the Russian Higli Command, like Marshal Tukachevsky, one of the few former noblemen in the Red Army. In the Civil War Voroshilov had command of the Tenth Red Army, and was, afterwards associated with Marshal (then Colonel) Budennv in the first Revolutionary Cavalry Corps of which Budenny was the brilliant leader. Voroshilov has a marked gift for organisation and was chiefly responsible for the construction of the Stalin Line and for improvement in Russia's serving it. After the Finnish War of 1939-40 he suffered a setback in favour, and was superseded in the active leadership by Timoshenko. ' Of Marshal Timoshenko less is known to the. outside world' but he is regarded as a thoroughly competent soldier. He succeeded T'ukachevsky as commander of the Kiev military district, and then, as stated above, became Commissar of Defence in succession to Voroshilov. Marshal Budenny, Avith bis big frame and sweeping moustache and his reputation for personal courage, was a popular hero of the civil war He, too, is, of peasant stock, from the Cossack country of the Don, and was the greatest cavalry leader of the war of 1918-20, taking part in the attack on Warsaw from the. south. He also played a prominent role with his Cossack horse in the defeat of General Wrangel, the last of the White. Russian leaders to leave Russia. It is believed that a mistake in a message sent to Budenny to help Tukachevsky in the attack on Warsaw, sending him in the wrong direction, led to the Red rout in Poland in 1820.