GRIM KERCH FINALE

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 14, 12 October 1943, Page 5

GRIM KERCH FINALE

Many Germans Drowned

LONDON, October 10. Further details of the Russian victory on the Taman Peninsula show that Soviet troops, in a violent charge, broke into the hist German defended positions, and that Soviet tanks succeeded in reaching the shores of the peninsula, thereby pushing the Germans back andliqui'JatLiifr them. Great numbers of German troops were literally driven into the straits and drowned. Thousands of dead weie left on the promontory. The troops were in such a hurry to get away that escape barges were hopelessly overladen and eight 'of them sank in the straits before they could reach the Crimea. German and Rumanian troops were caught in what the Red Army called the “Kuban rat trap” in the final hours or the liberation of the peninsula. German prisoners said that many ot their companions went mad under the weight or he Russian barrages. The P™™eis also related how their officers deluded them by asserting that a solid niotoi road had been built across Kerch (strait and that powerful German tank uni- 3 were waiting to smash the attacking Rus--61 The Germans heavily mined the entire Taman Peninsula. Refinements of nunin"- technique included bombs in pianos which exploded when the instruments lyere played and hand-grenades wired into coat-hangers. , . The Russians found hundreds of German and Rumanian corpses huddled in the streets of Port Taman.