MINES EVERYWHERE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 2 October 1941, Page 5

MINES EVERYWHERE

GERMAN AND ITALIAN ADMISSION DIFFICULTIES ON EASTERN FRONT. AIRBORNE TROOPS WIPED OUT. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, September 30. A war correspondent of the Berlin “Boersen Zeitung” writes: “The difficulties of our troops on the Leningrad front are interminable. Every advance is possible only with often severe losses, due to the fact that the retreating Russians have mined practically everything, f “Our troops came into these minefields —mines were in the rivers, houses and schools—and they sustained losses through mines in the cornfields. The High Command was forced to forbid troops entering any house of lodging. This order was given when time after time delayed-action bombs had exploded in the town of Luga, where bombs were hidden under carpets, in stoves and behind cupboards, thus causing heavy losses. “The German pioneers discovered in one district iff the town of Luga alone 1500 mines, while the greater part of Luga has still to be cleared of mines. It has become necessary to dispatch pioneer reinforcements to the Leningrade front.” An Italian war correspondent, writing to the “Corriere della Sera” from the Leningrad front, wonders if Leningrad will ever fall. He tells his paper that Leningrad is more hostile, more cold, more impenetrable than ever. Terribly cold winds blow from the Baltic, making men bad tempered and violent. Every Leningrad citizen carries a rifle, and all are on soldiers’ rations. If the outer ring of defences falls, a million men will defend the city from the houses. He also writes: “I cannot tell whether the Luftwaffe is actually being exhausted by the Soviet air force and the new British Hurricanes with 10 and 12 machine-guns,” he says, “but it is certain that the Russian anti-air-craft defences are extraordinarily powerful.” A Soviet major-general tells why so little has been heard of the famous German parachutist troops. He says that in the first days of the war the

Germans tried landing small parties behind the Russian lines, but that they were all wiped out. Later, groups of a few hundred were landed with light tanks and mountain artillery, but they suffered the same fate.