NO MAJOR CHANGE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 October 1942, Page 3

NO MAJOR CHANGE

FOR THIRD SUCCESSIVE DAY ENEMY CONCENTRATING ON SMALL AREAS. RUSSIANS FIRMLY BARRING WAY. LONDON, October 22. For the third successive day no major changes in the battle of Stalingrad are reported in today’s Moscow communique. The Moscow “Red Star” indicates that after seven days of the latest attack, the Germans are now reducing the tempo somewhat, and are resorting to the tactics of concentrating on narrow sectors. All the latest assaults in the factory and workers’ settlement area in the north have been repulsed.

The “Izvestia” states that the Luftwaffe dropped 1000 tons of bombs during 1800 air attacks against a mile-long sector in northern Stalingrad during the latest German assault. “The earth was seamed and wrecked by the whitehot metal, but the Germans have achieved only local successes, and they have failed in their objective of splitting the defences,” it says. “The Russians are firmly entrenched and still barring the way.” The Germans themselves admit that further Russian troop reinforcements with artillery are getting across the Volga under fire, A cold wind and steady, driving rain sweep through the city, but the German air activity is still intense. The Russians are successfully holding an air umbrella over the infantry positions.

While deadly fighting is going on at both ends of Stalingrad, which is probably the longest city in the world, life in the centre is practically normal. The “Pravda” says that the size of the city, which stretches 40 miles along the Volga, permits a continuance of life in the central section. Shells sometimes fall in these parts, but normally some children still play in the' streets and women tend to their allotments. The electric power station is still working, and a newspaper is appearing daily. The Moscow correspondent of “The Times” says that a battle of a very different character is being fought out on the billiad-table steppe south of Stalingrad, where villages are 10 or 15 miles apart. The struggles here are for the rare water-wells. Germans and Rumanians are trying to drive to Astrakhan via the lower Volga, and the Russians are countering with small cavalry and motor-cycle patrols which audaciously swoop on the Germans. According to the Berlin radio, the Germans have occupied the whole of the bank of the Volga behind Stalingrad. cutting off the garrison from supplies. A Soviet warship has sunk a Rumanian destroyer in the Black Sea, and three enemv transports have also been sunk. The Berlin military spokesman, Colonel Dietmar, in a broadcast, said: “The task of the German troops in the Caucasus is to protect the rich territories between the Don and the Kuban Rivers, without which the Soviet Union would be unable to survive. The enemy is using many fresh troops, in-

eluding trainees for the Ogpu. We face a formidable task. There is no question of storming forward and overrunning the enemy positions, we can only advance yard by yard through the seemingly endless Soviet fortifications.”