NAZI BRIDGEHEADS WIPED OUT

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 5, 1 October 1943, Page 5

NAZI BRIDGEHEADS WIPED OUT

Fall Of Dnieper City DEVASTATED LAND LEFT BEHIND BY ENEMY (By Telegraph.—Press Assn. —Copyright.) LONDON, September 30. In an order of the day to the Red Army, Marshal Stalin yesterday announced the capture of the important enemy bases of Kremenchug and Rudnya. An industrial centre and railway junction, Kremenchug was the Germans last fortress on the eastern bank of the middle Dnieper. Rudnya, on the central front, was a communications centre in the German defence system 40 miles south-east of Vitebsk. ... , . c , . Moscow reports that 6000 Germans were killed in fighting for the town of Darnitsa, seven or eight miles east of Kiev, and Soviet troops have now reached the Dnieper immediately ini front of Kiev. The Russians occupied a four-mile-long river island only a quarter of a mile from the high cliff on which Kiev stands.

The Germans falling back from the rich farmlands of the Ukraine Are leaving behind a dead land, says Reuter s Moscow correspondent. The Red Army is pushing through wild rose bushes on the Dnieper, bank and inarching through orchards of blackened apple trees. Acres of ryefields have been flattened, not by the trampling of the feet of the retreating armies but by the bodies of Ukrainian peasants who were forced at machinegun point ■to roll on their crops and destroy them when German efforts to fire the crops had failed.

The Germans were apparently determined to leave a completely lifeless zone between their rearguards and the angry Red Army. Masses of Ukrainian peasants were carried off at the last moment by the retreating army and forced to make long treks to the Dnieper, where they were herded into barges with their own cattle and dragged across the river by ropes.

West Bank Defences. Tens of thousands of Russians on the west bank of the Dnieper were forced to -build new enemy fortifications. A Russian correspondent, quoted by Reuter, says that the west bank has been cut into a series of vertical terraces peppered with pill-boxes and firing-points, while the lower bank has -been saturated with mines. The Russian correspondent concludes : “It is impossible to lay mines all along the Dnieper, and in the autumn the water is noisy and the nights are darn, so no woudcr the Germans on the west bank are nervous.” Moscow correspondents tell how the Red Army stormed Kremenchug. The city was defended by three belts of strongpoints with very strong fire-power from guns of all calibres. The Germans had provided against all possible outflanking attacks, but had not allowed for the great striking-power of the Red Army. The climax of the three days battle came when a Russian tank force made a remarkable charge. It broke through the defence belts and rushed straight through the centre of the city to the river bank, cutting the defences in two. t The Germans had to evacuate their positions. As they did so the Red Air Force destroyed some of the pontoon bridges. Other enemy forces used rafts and barges to get across the river, and these came under a terrific bombardment from Russian artillery and planes. Thousands of the Germans .were drowned. Kremenchug, as an important railway junction, will be very useful to the Russians in the coming bad weather. . The Russians are battling unremittingly to make the whole length of the Dnieper indisputably their own. lhe stage is being set for the final battle tor Kiev, the Germans’ most vital bastion of the- Dnieper line, with strong Red Army forces massing for the assault against the city. Kiev stands on cults 300 ft. high, rising sheer from the Dniejer, making a frontal assault of comparable to Hie storming of the cliffs of Dover. Reuter's Moscow correspondent says that the Russians hold the east bank for 300 miles north of Kiev, and south ot Kiev they hold sections of the east bank between Kiev nnd Xuporozhe totalling at least 200 miles. . ■ i. The United Press correspondent at Moscow declares there is not the slightest evidence that the Russians are already attempting to force the Duieper in the Dnepropetrovsk area, or that railway bridges there have been wrecked. , , reports, printed abroad and carried back to Moscow, merely make Moscow correspondents laugh. Retreat Over River. The British United Press adds that the latest available news concerning the position of Dnepropetrovsk is that the -Kj} 8 * sians have reached the.east bank of the Dnieper above and below the city, and have begun mopping up in the suburbs of Dnepropetrovsk on the east bank, while the Germans are swarming over to the west bank. . A correspondent, describing the pellmell rush to get across the river, says: "What is happening beggars description, with masses of men and material jamming the crossings. The Germans previously placed posters in the villages sayin"- -Males between the ages ot lb and 65'must immediately evacuate to the west bank. Those remaining are liable to be shot on sight as partisans.' Reuter says that guns have been roaring all night across the Dnieper in a, series of gigantic duels for mastery of the river crossings.. Hundreds of flashes light up the dark waters of the broad, swiftly-flowing river. The Germans have still got big infantry and tank concentrations at their bridgeheads on the east bank. They have been ordered, under threat of being shot, to hold on at all costs. Merciless Russian bombing of the Kerch Straits is causing a heavy deathroll among the Germans trying to escape to the Crimea before the Russian advance in the Taman Peninsula, says Reuters Moscow correspondent. The German escape craft include even rowing-boats and rafts. ' The “Izvestia” declares that the Russians are advancing into White Russia at. great speed, and thoroughly disorganizing the German defence plans. Reuter reports that heavy Russian guns today are shelling Gomel. Russian infantry are moving in toward the town under a creeping 'barrage. vtnei Red Army forces are driving toward Zhlobin junction, on the Gomel-Minsk a member of the Central Committee of the Communist 1 arty, speaking over Moscow radio, declared. “The breath of victory is now being left. The claim that the German retreat was made according to plan in order to shorten the line is completely false, llie recent operations have actually lengthened the line. The Red Army in the last two months has advanced 200 to 2w) miles and freed an urea of over llu.ooo square miles, 10 times larger than Belgium.” Salvoes from Moscow. ft was announced in Moscow today that the guns would salute the gallant victors of Kremenchug with 12 salvoes of 124 -tins. Marshal Stalin’s order of the day concluded with the words: “Everlasting glory to the heroes who follow the German's in the defence of their motherland ! Death to the German invader!” The routine night Soviet communique states: “The Red Rrmy on the Steppes front, after two days' of fierce fighting, broke enemy resistance over a considerable stretch of the east bank of the Dnieper and captured Kremenchug by assault. On the Kiev sector, the Russians after throwing the enemy to the west bunk of the Dnieper, captured the railway junction of Darnitsa, east of Kiev. Advances of up to six miles were made on the Gomel and Mogilev sectors. On the Vitebsk sector the Russians broke resistance and occupied the town and railway station of Rudnya. More than GW) other inhabited places were occupied during the day. ’