BEHIND THE LINES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 21 July 1941, Page 6

BEHIND THE LINES

FORMIDABLE RUSSIAN ORGANISATION SABOTAGE & GUERILLA WARFARE. RUTHLESS SCORCHED EARTH POLICY. (Received This Day, 12.25 p.m.) LONDON, July 20. The Russians are organising and applying sabotage and guerilla warfare behind the German lines on an enormous scale. Their activities are concentrated not only against the communications of the advancing German armies, but extend back to the very sources of Hitler’s supplies. M. Stalin's call for the scorching of the earth, wherever the Germans appear, has been put into effect with devastating results. before has an aggressor been met with such ruthless fanaticism. Immediately the Germans enter a new town or village, they post up notices threatening to shoot anyone hiding or failing to report the presence of guerillas, but, according to the Moscow radio not a single man has yet been betrayed. The inhabitants of a town on the right bank of the River Dvina formed j themselves into guerilla bands when the Russian regular troops left, to conform with a broader strategy. The townspeople filled thousands of bottles from a local brewery with petrol and hurled them at German tanks, scores of which were put out of action. The town’s resistance was so strong that the German entry was delayed for two days and accomplished only after intensive artillery preparation. It was a city of the dead when eventually the German infantry marched in. Every living soul had been evacuated, but seven men, hiding under a bridge across 'the Dvina, waiting for the first enemy column to cross, blew up the bridge and perished with the column as it rumbled on to the bridge.