WARFARE ON SKIS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 January 1940, Page 5

WARFARE ON SKIS

The Russians are setting up a single strand of barbed-wire in the Salla sector in order to multilate the ankles of high-speed skiers, but Russian wirers have been found frozen to death as a result of sleep indused by exhaustion. The Russians also are using skis. On the Karelian Isthmus the weather is particularly sharp. The temperature has dropped to 33 degrees Fahr, below zero. The Finns are reported to have captured many Russian troops made unconscious by the cold, and to have driven off attacks on the Mannerheim Line, which were preceded by heavy artillery fire. A report from Helsinki on the latest Finnish victory states that the 44th Russian Division, which was unaware of the destruction of the 163rd, was annihilated between Soumossalmi and Raate, a small frontier village, while endeavouring to outflank the Finns in the hope of reinforcing the remnants of their comrades. - The invading division was driven back into Russia in a desperate condition. Finnish ski patrols have severed the branch of the railway on which the Red troops depended for their supplies. The destruction of the 44th Division was effected largely with material taken from the 163rd. The intention of the 44th Division was to cut the Finnish waistline, but it found itself cut off and starving, with heavy vehicles stuck in the marshes. Heroism by Finnish suicide squads paved the way for victory by piercing the Soviet lines and destroying the frontier railway, thus helping to starve the Russians into surrender, to which systemactic Finnish bombing of their concentrations contributed. Many Russians were killed by the smashing of the ice on the lakes on which they were forming up. The Finnish losses were infinitesimal. The vanquished Russians lacked fighting experience. In the last few days heavy fighting was recorded in this area, but the Finnish General Staff, as in the victory farther north recently, refrained from giving details of the battle till it was won. A Copenhagen message says that a Finnish patrol suffered heavy losses while attempting to damage a section of the Murmansk railway. By means of accurate artillery fire, a radio message states, Finnish troops are reported to have smashed a concentration of Russian troops who were moving up to attack the Mannerheim Line.