Suicide Troops Endeavouring To Prevent Rout

Manawatu Times, Volume 69, Issue 61, 15 March 1944, Page 5

Suicide Troops Endeavouring To Prevent Rout

(By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright.) Received Tuesday, 11.25 p.xn. LONDON, March 14. The capture of Kherson (reported earlier in an Order of the Day by Marshal Stalin) is a severe blow for von Mannstein whose forces are fleeing before the Russian onslaught. Reuter’s Moscow correspondent reports that Soviet reinforcements have now crossea the Dnieper Estuary to join in the battle beyond Kherson. The collapse of the remaining German positions east of Nikolaiev is imminent. The Germans are throwing out ghields of suicide troops in an attempt Co protect their disengaging movement in the Dnieper Bend towards Nikolaiev. Two Red armies arc now converging against the important Black Sea poro of Nikolaiev —one from Kherson and the other from Poltava, while further north in the Gaivoron area the Russians are engaged in a fierce struggle to establish their first bridgehead on the west bank of the Bug River. There is still no sign of the Germans making a determined stand at any point in the Ukraine, says the Associated Press’s Moscow correspondent. Any resistance that is offering appears to be only to allow the evacuation of as much material as possible. Well-informed circles in Moscow believe von Mannstein is making a final stand on the Dniester marking the old Rumanian border, where strong fortifi cations are reported to have been erected. Seven major Russian attacks in the Ukraine are driving the Germans nearer and nearer the Rumanian border. The Paris radio says a new Russian offensive has Degun south of Dubno beyond the prewar Polish frontier. * Once more the Russians have occupied a few thousand ' square miles of the southern part of the eastern front, but they have had to pay for them very dearly indeed,” said a German radio commentator. ‘‘Once more the Russian mass attacks required from us a very elastic defence—the sort of elastic defence which has been so much laughed at by British and American propa gandists. But this is the only possible tactic which the war in the east has taught us—that there is no cure against the sudden shifting of the main weight of attack. Thß Russians have been able to drive wedges into the German lines which look at first sight rather important and dangerous. Honce the need for elasticity.”