HUGE FORCE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 August 1942, Page 3

HUGE FORCE

ASSEMBLED BY VON BOCK FOR THRUST AGAINST STALINGRAD. POSITION ADMITTEDLY PRECARIOUS. (Bv 'Eelc' , raph—Press Association —Copyright) LONDON, August 23. All reports from the front agree that the battles of the Don elbow have reached a pitch of frenzy surpassing anything in the hundreds of furious encounters of the past month in the whole Kletskaya region. Field-Marshal von Bock is still massing enormous reinforcements opposite a newly-established bridgehead in the Don bend, ready for a vital thrust against Stalingrad, and it is estimated that 500,000 troops and thousands of tanks and aircraft are assembled for a frantic bid to cut off Stalingrad from the Caucasus. The Russian,, newspapers emphasise that the German attack will be more dangerous than ever. Marshal Timoshenko is rushing up all his available reserves, but the Germans are maintaining their superiority in men and material in this crucial sector. Moscow admits that the Russian position is precarious in spite of the destruction of the greater part of the force which crossed the Don. A Moscow correspondent today says: “The enemy has reached the river almost everywhere in the bend, and

forces have made a further crossing and are fighting furiously to establish a bridgehead.” The “Daily Telegraph’s” Moscow correspondent yesterday said that there were still some Germans across the Don elbow 40 miles west of Stalingrad, but the remains of their bridgehead were being fiercely counter-at-tacked. The Germans south-west of Kletskaya held a long stretch of the west bank and were vainly attempting to force several routes across the river. In the furious fighting at the bridgehead across the Don elbow the Russians were crushing the Germans with tank and bayonet charges, throttling them against the bank, crushing them under their tank caterpillars, hurling them in thick bundles down the bank into the river and slaughtering them in the water with machine-gun and mortar fire. The Moscow “Izvestia” said that in the Russians’ counter-attacks to prevent consolidation of the bridgeheads the Germans were hurled back to the river, reduced to dust by tank traps and pinned to the ground by bayonets, while the waters of the Don became the colour of blood. The Russians, who were still fighting inside the Don bend north-west of Stalingrad were holding their own. The Berlin radio claims that the Germans and Rumanians in the area of the lower Kuban have captured Krymskaya (30 miles from Novorossisk) and Kurtshanksaya. The Moscow radio says that the Russians on the Voronezh front have continued to advance at one point in spite of five successive German tank attacks. Fierce battles are continuing along the west bank of the Don near Voronezh.