DECISIVE STAGE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 August 1942, Page 4

DECISIVE STAGE

REACHED IN SOUTHERN I z . RUSSIA ' .'.ND ORDERED BY SOVIET. SOVIET TROOPS BREAKING INTO ENEMY REAR. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) (Received This Day, 12.20 p.m.) LONDON, July 31. A decisive stage has been reached in the southern battles, where the phase of strategic retreat and delaying rearguard actions has ended. Reuter’s Moscow correspondent says the Soviet High Command has decided that the time has come for a general stand. The war of rapid manoeuvre is raging with daily increasing ferocity throughout the Lower Don region. Russian tanks and cavalry, at first in one place then in another, are breaking into the German rear, cutting communications, encircling small groups and annihilating them. The Germans, with ever-renewed forces, are launching attack after attack in all sectors and the Luftwaffe is doing its utmost to break Russian communications across the Don region, westward of Stalingrad. According to the Lyons radio, street fighting is going on in the town of Azov. This is the only information regarding the region south-west of Rostov since the fall of that city. The “Red Star” admits that the situation in the Bataisk region remains grave. It is reported in Moscow that the Russians are persistently attacking in a sector on the Bryansk front, where the Germans are on the defensive, trying to hold fortified positions. The Russians have captured villages which the Germans had linked up into an organised centre of resistance. SWEEPING ENEMY CLAIMS. While the Paris radio continues to describe the development of operations on the Taman Peninsula, the Berlin radio declared that reports in a German communique stated: “German, Roumanian and Slovak troops crossed the lower reaches of the Don on a front of 150 miles,, dispersing Russian forces defending this sector. The Russians are streaming back in a disorderly flight, pursued by mobile units and vanguards of infantry and rifle divisions and advanced elements of our armies are already 115 miles south of the Don. The fighting for Prosalysk is progressing. Infantry divisions have taken Kuskchovsk. German and Roumanian troops in the Don elbow threw the Russians across the river.”

The Berlin radio claimed that the Germans, had dispersed Russian forces attempting to cross the Neva river, on the Leningrad front, and that the Germans, in the Rjev area, repulsed strong Russian attacks.