NERVE GAS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 15 May 1942, Page 3

NERVE GAS

ALLEGED USE BY NAZIS IN CRIMEA REPORTED EXPULSION OF CORRESPONDENT. FOR MAKING PREMATURE DISCLOSURE. LONDON, May 13. The Berlin correspondent of the Swedish newspaper “Nyadagligt Allehanda,” who has been expelled from Germany “because he? sent news without foundation,” says that the Germans are using a “nerve gas” on the Kerch Peninsula. This nerve gas does not cause bodily harm, but stuns the soldiers, who wake up prisoners. Berlin circles claim that the new weapon is a “boundary case” in the use of gas. Vichy radio says that nerve gas achieved a complete surprise on the| Kerch Peninsula. The radio adds that it is reported from Bucharest that German chemists arrived in Rumania from the great chemical combine, LG. FarbenIndustries to produce poison gases for use in Russia only, and that German and Rumanian workers were employed on a “secret invisible weapon.” against the main Russian armies between Kursk and the Black Sea. Reports to London from Moscow deciare that the Kerch Peninsula is still the scene of a stubborn struggle. The Russians have thrown in all arms, including the Black Sea Fleet, and General Kozlov, commander of the Red Army in the Caucasus, is flinging in fresh forces. With the forces on both sides comparatively small on a narrow front, the battle is largely a duel to death between the Nazi dive-bombers and the Russian Stormovik tank-busters, and British and American heavy tanks and planes over the entire front. German air activity over the waters near the peninsula indicates that the Russians are rushing up reinforcements by sea. A report from Berne, Switzerland, says that strong German forces appear to have launched an attack in the Ukraine, along a line running west from Taganrog northward to Stalino and Petropavlovka, thence west to Dnepropetrovsk, but the only progress made is in the neighbourhood of Petropavlovka. The losses on both sides have been heavy. The “Red Star” says that in the Donetz Basin the Red Army has driven the enemy from a heavily fortified position of great strategic importance. The Soviet Army paper also says that the Russians, in heavy fighting in sectors of the Kalinin front, have driven the Germans from a number of fortified hills.