BATTLEFRONT TOUR

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 September 1941, Page 5

BATTLEFRONT TOUR

MADE BV NON-RUSSIAN JOURNALISTS TERRITORY RECOVERED FROM ENEMY. EVIDENCE OF GERMAN SAVAGERY. (By Telegraph—Press Association— Copyright) LONDON, September 22. Britishers were included in a party of non-Russian journalists who were taken to the front for the first time and toured territory in the Smolensk region which has been recaptured by the Russians. They visited the battlefield of Elnia, where the Germans had been driven 12 miles west of the town and were still retreating after eight divisions had been badly mauled. They also saw the scene of the Yartsevo victory, where the Russians regained six to 10 miles along a salient of GO miles after detroying or crippling 10 enemy divisions.

Reuter’s correspondent says that the recaptured piece of Russia contains many “Guernicas,” destroyed by the Germans in terror raids, and also villages which were flattened out by shell fire, and the graves of thousands of Russian and German soldiers.

. When the Germans on the night of September 4 decided to evacuate Elnia they ordered a few remaining inhabitants to assemble inside the church, which was then locked. The Germans then systematically set fire to every house, and thus Elnia was an inferno when the Russian troops re-entered.