VON BOCK’S COHORTS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 October 1941, Page 5

VON BOCK’S COHORTS

CAUGHT BY WINTER BAULKED BEFORE MOSCOW. PREPARING FOR SUPREME ASSAULT. (By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright) LONDON, October 22. Instead of having comfortable winter quarters in Moscow, Marshal von Bock’s cohorts are faced with the prospect of fighting a continual war of movement to keep warm in the countryside, over which the snow is gradually thickening. The Russians, as realistically as ever, admit the gravity of the situation on the Moscow and Ukraine fronts, but this very realism encourages confidence when the admissions of dangers from the German pressure are accompanied by continuing evidence of forceful and tenacious resistance and even effective counter-blows. The Stockholm correspondent of “The Times” says that the fact that Marshal Timoshenko has forced the Germans to take breath and has been able to strike back during the German pause is a great achievement. The Germans, he says, are obviously tired, but are too much awake to risk a long pause while Marshal Timoshenko simultaneously regains strength. The most pressing German task before the real winter descends remains, as the Germans have many times explained, to destroy the Red Army as an organised and coherent force, and the main strength of this army is holding at bay the main strength of the German armies which have been baulked before Moscow. Therefore the invaders are feverishly preparing for a supreme assault.