LOCAL SUCCESSES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 October 1941, Page 5

LOCAL SUCCESSES

GAINED BV RUSSIANS SOME ENEMY ADMISSIONS. FIGHTING ALONG THE DNIEPER. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) i LONDON, October 3. Except that the Russians have reported the recapture of four villages and a strategic' hill in the vicinity of 'Staraya Russa, 130 miles south of Leningrad, the latest information on the RussoGerman operations is couched in only very general terms.; i Reports of local thrusts and counterattacks on fronts which extend for hundreds of miles give little idea of the fluctuations of fortunes unless they are related to place-names, but it is interesting that the Germans today admitted that the Russians have again attempted to cross the Dnieper, whereas previouslynthey did their best to give the impression that the Soviet forces held no positions along the river. German commentators also explained the slow progress of the Rumanians in the Odessa sector, “where the battlefields are littered with the dead of both sides,” as due to the fact that the Russians still have much artillery which must first be overcome. A noteworthy sequel to the. recent statement from the “Daily Telegraph’s” Stockholm correspondent that Marshal Bluecher is training a special winter army of 500,000 men in Siberia is ’a Berlin claim that a German infantry division has captured 500 Siberian soldiers in the past few days. Berlin adds that they were only recently transferred to the sector in which they were taken prisoner. It appears that the Russains, in firmly retaining Strelna, in the Leningrad zone, played havoc with the Germans, whose line of retreat was littered with piles of dead and equipment for several miles. The war correspondent of the Italian newspaper “Corriere della Sera,” after seeing Leningrad’s fortifications, said: “The conquest of the Maginot Line appears to be child’s-play.” The independent French news agency says: “Germans who were taken prisoner at Leningrad do not possess overcoats. They were told that the war would be over before the autumn. Now they are shivering in trenches.” It adds that the Germansi are sending up reinforcements to the front without having time to form them into regiments.