MUST BE HALTED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 July 1942, Page 4

MUST BE HALTED

ENEMY ON SOUTHERN FRONT SOVIET PAPER’S CONFIDENT DECLARATION. FATE OF FATHERLAND AT STAKE. (British Official Wireless.) ' (Received This Day, 11.27 a.m.) RUGBY, July 19. Messages from Moscow show that the continued severity of enemy pressure, though still keeping the situation critical, specially in the south, has in no way broken the Russian resistance anywhere. Appealing to the Red Army to exert its utmost effort to halt the Germans in the south, the “Red Star” says: “If the enemy there achieves his aim. the threat to'the Fatherland will increase tenfold. Can we hold the enemy? Absolutely, yes. The defenders of the Soviet south can and must find the strength to stem the Germans and bleed them white. This is demanded by the Fatherland, the fate of which is being decided on the battlefield.” Fighting in the Voronezh area continues with unabated fury. The Red Army is slowly recapturing lost ground in spite of the savage resistance of the Germans, who continually bring up fresh men and tanks in face of enormous losses. The Soviet forces continue to hold the initiative, while the Germans are on the defensive. They are feverishly erecting fortifications between the Don and Voronezh rivers and digging tank traps to protect their flanks. Simultaneously, the Germans are trying to bring up reinforcements across the Don, but Soviet pilots are wrecking the crossings. The Germans are now constructing drawbridges, camouflaging them.by day and using them by night. These bridges, however, are only partially successful, as Soviet bombers and artillery hammer them day and night. The Russians have now halted the enemy advance on Voronezh for six days. In trying to distract the Soviet forces from the city, the Germans have intensified their activity in the northern sector, but have been frustrated. In the southern sector the Russians followed up, and recaptured two settlements by storming. They are also continually harassing German concentrations on the eastern and western banks of the Don. In the central part of’the main battle line, on the Bryansk front, where for days severe fighting has taken place, the situation has now become calm.

Here, as at Voronez/n, some 250 miles to the south-east, the Germans are forced to defend themselves behindfortifications. A large part of the enemy’s forces hasc been switched elsewhere, apparently to the Voronezh area.