Ghastly Spectacle of Overthrown Red Armies

Manawatu Times, Volume 65, Issue 4, 5 January 1940, Page 7

Ghastly Spectacle of Overthrown Red Armies

Countless Dead ; Shattered Tanks and Lorries Russian Reinforcements From Siberia United Press Assn.—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright. Received Thursday, 6.30 p.m. LONDON, January 3. The conditions on the Soviet lines of retreat arc becoming chaotic, while the ruin of the overthrown armies offers a ghastly spectacle, says the Daily Telegraph’s correspondent at the front dealing with the aftermath of the battle of Tolvajarvi. lie says countless Russian dead are lying as they fell beneath new-fallen snow. Shattered tanks and lorries and heaps of debris are found all along the battlefield’s main artery leading to Lake Algajarvi. There the hillside forests are full of snow-covered corpses wiped out by machine-guns. All bore gasmasks. There must have been many Finnish dead, but these had already been removed for burial. The British Associated Press’ correspondent at Kiantajarvi says all that remains of 17.000 men comprising the division trapped at Kiantajarvi are 2000 wanderers in forests and snowdrifts, where the Finns mounted on skis relentlessly pursue them. The captives declared they were never told against whom they were going to fight. They are mostly collective farmers with brief military training and seem bewildered by their fate. Russian reinforcements to repair the ravages of the battle are arriving from Siberia, but the Paris wireless states that they will reach their destinations decimated. Many have been shot for insubordination. The Finns are fighting on eight, or, including the air and sea. ten fronts and are exhausting their ammunition. The problem of fresh supplies, despite captures, is serious. The Russians, on the other hand, seem to possess inexhaustible resources. The air front extends over almost the whole of Finland. The Russians employ 300 planes daily, but achieved nothing of military importance. Finnish aircraft claim to have penetrated far behind Leningrad and dropped millions of photographically-illustrated pamphlets showing the humane treatment of Russian prisoners. Finnish pilots attacked the Russian base at Liinahamari, the port of Petsamo, apparently using fast foreign bombers. A Finnish communique states: “Soviet gunfire on the Karelian Isthmus prefaced fierce infantry attacks which the Finnish artillery and infantry fire repulsed. Other attacks met a similar fate. A Moscow communique reports nothing of importance. Planes merely made reconnaissance flights. The Soviet Embassy in Loudon, charging the press and radio with “fantastic anti-Soviet inventions comparable with 1919,” says they described in most lurid terms alleged largescale air bombardments on an open town in Finland. “This is demonstrably absurd when one compares the casualties of a single Japanese raid with all the raids with which the Soviet is accused. ” The blizzard continues to sweep the Karelian Isthmus, immobilising the Russian offensive against the Mannerheim Line. The Finns have now smashed five of the 12 Russian thrusts between Lake Ladoga and the Arctic and have established a better strategic position along the frontier than at any time since the outbreak of the war. Scattered Russians on the isthmus front r.re digging trenches and the conflict around here is developing into trench warfare. German Threats of Intervention PREPARING WAY FOR ACTIVE SUPPORT OF RUSSIA Received Thursday, 9.30 p.m. BERLIN, January 4. The press for the first time lias acquainted the public of tiie fact that Germany might be involved in the conflict over Finland and prepared the way for more active support of Russia. The newspapers approvingly reprint the Russian accusation that Britain and France are attempting to widen the war, for which reason they encouraged Finland to fight. The press also records great concentrations of British and Irench troops in Western Asia and French demands to send a fleet to the Black .Sea and an army to Finland. Reports are also published that France has offered to send 10,000 crack Alpine troops to Finland. Authoritative quarters told neutral correspondents that Germany would be forced to take an active hand if British and t rench troops went to Finland and would consider Sweden and Norway to be infringing their neutrality if they allowed the passage of British and French men and munitions. The Rome radio declares that Stalin has ordered Red Army leaders to spare neither men nor materials in the new effort to crush the Finns.