STILL RAGING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 February 1942, Page 3

STILL RAGING

STARAYA RUSSA BATTLE Vain German Efforts to Break Through SOVIET SUCCESSES IN OTHER AREAS MORE DETAILS OF ENEMY LOSSES LONDON, February 27. On the Russian front heavy fighting continues in the Staraya Russa area, where the German Command is making desperate efforts to save the remainder of the German Sixteenth Army. The enclosed enemy force of 90,000 men has been unsuccessful in its efforts to break through and fresh German reserves have been held up by the Soviet forces. In the Smolensk region 5,000 Germans were wiped out in a recent battle. South-west of Moscow the Russians are engaged in the liberation of the Kursk Province, between Orel and Kharkov. There has been further Russian progress on the Leningrad front, where the enemy losses in three days have included 2,300 killed. Russian warships, accompanied by smaller ships, shelled the port of Theodosia, in the Crimea, on Thursday. The Germans also admit fierce Russian attacks at Sebastopol and in the Kerch Peninsula. In ten days’ fighting on the central front the Russians have advanced 75 miles and retaken 40 places. This advance cost the Germans 4,200 men killed. Thousands of Leningrad’s workers are now at work in vast new factories in the Urals. Today, hundreds of men are helping to produce big Russian tanks in these new factories.