UNYIELDING STAND

Wairarapa Times-Age, 29 October 1941, Page 5

UNYIELDING STAND

ORDERED BY GENERAL ZHUKOV TIMOSHENKO’S NEW LINE IN SOUTH. AGAINST POWERFUL ENEMY ONSET. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, October 27. An order of the day issued yesterday to the defenders of Moscow by General Zhukov, commander-in-chief of the northern and central sectors, had called: “Not a step back! Infantrymen, seek out the enemy tanks and destroy them; comrades, into battle!” The Kuibyshev correspondent of the British United Press says that German bombers are raiding Moscow day and night, according to telephone reports from the capital. Besides dropping explosives and incendiary bombs, the raiders are showering the city with leaflets demanding its surrender and threatening dire consequences if it continues its defiance. Other messages say that the bus, train and tube services are all operating normally. Theatres and cinemas are still open, and more than 200 new provision shops have been opened to ensure that the people have enough to eat. In many streets, anti-tank defences have been erected. “Tonight’s new from the Moscow front is reassuring, with reports of Soviet counter-attacks in all directions, but the time' has come to face the unpleasant truth that Russia has now lost the industrial riches of the Donetz basin,” says the “Daily Telegraph’s” Stockholm correspondent. Slowly but relentlessly, he states, Field-Marshal Rundstedt’s 15,000 tanks and 2,000,000 men are smashing through the eastern Ukraine. - As these Germans force their way eastward, Marshal Timoshenko has organised a new line along the River Don at least as strong as the Dnieper line. Timoshenko's line runs from the Sea of Azov to Rostov, thence along the Don to Stalingrad, and thence along the Volga to Saratov, where the first units of Budenny's and Voroshilov’s new armies are already taking up positions. t DEFENCE OF ROSTOV. Timoshenko’s main strength is naturally massed behind Rostov, and it is estimated that 1,000,000 men are the advance guard for the Caucasus. The marshal, if desperately pressed, may destroy the sluices of a number of hydro-electric power stations which are within 50 miles of Rostov, thus confronting the Germans with a raging winter torrent which the recent rains would make all the more impossible to cross if the three main bridges across the Don at Rostov are blown up. The Moscow radio announced: “Under pressure of fresh German reinforce/Yients near Kharkov, the Soviet troops parried out a slight vzithdrawal. The town is now endangered. The German losses are exceptionally heavy. On one day alone in the approaches to Kharkov about 3500 enemy officers and men were killed and wounded. The Germans, declares Vichy radio, are about 20 miles from Moscow. The Russians are maintaining successful counter-hammering at the Germans outside Moscow, says the Moscow radio, which adds: “Hour after hour hand-to-hand fighting is going on. The Germans are not only being held but are being pushed back' at one or two points. The railway station and electric power station in one town changed hands several times till finally the Russians ousted the enemy in a succession of bayonet charges.” The radio says that the great struggle for Kalinin has been raging for 10 days and nfghts without respite in rain and appalling weather. House-to-house and street-to-street fighting is still proceeding. The war correspondent of the Moscow “Red Star” states that at least 15,000 Germans have been killed and wounded in six weeks’ fighting on the front south of Leningrad in the'vicinity of Novgorod and Lake Ilmen. In two days’ fighting alone two German infahtry divisions lost 2300 killed and wounded.