AT A STANDSTILL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 January 1940, Page 6

AT A STANDSTILL

NO FIGHTING ON FINNISH FRONT SOVIET MAY BE PREPARING NEW ATTACK. DESTRUCTION OF THE 44TH DIVISION. By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright. (Received This Day, 1.25 p.m.) HELSINKI. January 9. The war is at a standstill, indicating that the Russians are temporarily exhausted, but they are possibly preparing for a new attack, either on Salla or the Mannerheim Line. A Finnish communique states that land operations are confined to patrolling and gunfire. There is little activity at sea or in the air. Reports from Suomussalmi agree that seven thousand Russians were killed and a thousand captured, ten thousand fleeing to the border where the wreckage of the Forty-Fourth Division is drifting aimlessly in the wilderness, doomed to death from frostbite and starvation if it can escape the patrols which are annihilating hundreds. Several Russian regiments on other fronts are reported to be deserting to the forests, after shooting their officers. The soldiers complain that the commissars are comfortably housed while privates bivouac in the snow. Many commissars have been replaced from Moscow as a result of these reports.