RIVER BATTLE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 September 1941, Page 6

RIVER BATTLE

NOTABLE RUSSIAN SUCCESS GIRL MEMBER OF HOME GUARD, PROMINENT IN ATTACKING Llhfe. (Received This Day, Noon.) LONDON, September 16. The Battle for Leningrad reached a new pitch of fury when Soviet troops drove the Germans from strategical positions near the city, after bitter hand-to-hand fighting. General von Leeb’s forces had seized a group of small islands in the River “V,” evidently aiming to use them as a jumping-off ground against Leningrad. They were also established on one bank of the river. Soviet troops at dawn, under cover of artillery fire, crossed to the islands in pontoons and boats and, defying a heavy German counterfire, successfully 1 stormed the enemy positions •with bayonets and hand grenades. The Germans lost hundreds of killed and much materials. The Soviet barrage lifted as the stormers reached the island objectives and bombarded the further bank, which was held by German covering forces. The Russians also used mine-throw-ers in this action, in which a girl mem : ber of the Soviet Home Guard was prominent in the first line of the attackers. The Russians now hold the islands and both banks of the river, which the German artillery is fruitlessly shelling.

GERMANS TRAPPED. Other reports from the north-west-ern front state that the Russians recaptured the township of Slautino, after cutting off the retreat of a large German force. The Germans lost one and a half battalions before they fled, running the gauntlet of machine-gun and rifle fire which suddenly opened up from the rear. The Soviet News Agency declares that a regiment of the German Thirtieth Infantry Division was annihilated in another action, in which the Russians captured 250 Germans and much booty. These successes followed on a series of counter-attacks by a Soviet force threatened with encirclement. SURPRISE TANK ATTACK. Further proof Soviet resourcefulness is contained in a “Red Star” correspondent’s description of a surprise tank attack which staggered the Germans in the Leningrad area. From fortified heights overlooking the road and railway, the Germans planned to drive the Russians into a “mud trap,” where incessant rain had converted low-ly-ing land into a swamp, but before the Germans were able to develop their plain, Russians tanks came rumbling through “specially cut lanes” from the heights, driving them into the very trap set for the Russians. Floundering in the swamp, the Germans became a target for Soviet artillery and minethrowers. The whole German force was routed and left 400 officers and men dead on the battlefield. From the German side also come reports testifying to the relentlessness of the fighting in the Leningrad area, where, according to the German radio, violent house to house struggles preceded the capture of a town within the fortification area.

GERMAN LOSSES

ON APPROACHES TO KIEV. FORESTS STREWN WITH BODIES. (Received This Day. 10.10 a.m.) LONDON, September 16. The Moscow Tass Agency states that 30,000 Germans so far have died on the approaches to Kiev. The Germans have now dug in, in open country. The autumn rains are already falling and the nights are increasingly cold. The landscape is completely altered. Fascist graves are everywhere, fields devastated and forests strewn with bodies. z