FIERCER FIGHTING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 11 December 1942, Page 3

FIERCER FIGHTING

GERMAN OPPOSITION ON RUSSIAN FRONT Becoming More Formidable BUT SOVIET FORCES STILL ADVANCING ENEMY DRIVE THWARTED LOX DOX, December 10. Fighting' in some sectors of the Russian front grows fiercer than ever as German opposition becomes more formidable. Whatever advances are made, it is still the Russians who are making 1 them. South of Stalingrad, the Germans are giving the Red Army the most trouble, In that area the Germans are trying day and night to drive a wedge into the Soviet positions. At one time they nearly succeeded but Russian reinforcements arrived in the nick of time and scattered or destroyed the enemy. On the central front, the “Red Star” states that Russians have captured an important centre of resistance. This was the outcome of a battle which raged for 24 hours. The Germans lost 700 men killed,

ORDERED TO DIE

RATHER THAN RETREAT GERMANS ON CENTRAL FRONT. FRESH ENEMY DIVISIONS , THROWN IN. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) LONDON. December 9. Though the Russians are' ’still believed to be holding their important territorial gains on the central front, specially across the enemy communications, the Germans are recovering from their confusion after the shocks of the Red Army's offensive and have intensified the firceness -.of their resistance and counter-attacks. More German panzers and aircraft and fresh divisions have appeared in the Rzhev-Vyazma-Velikiye Luki triangle in the last two days. Germans who have been captured in the last 24 hours asserted that they had been ordered to die rather than retreat, adding that detachments had been formed to shoot all who retired before the Russian advance. Indicating intensified fighting, the Moscow correspondent of “The Times” says that powerful German counter-at-tacks have been made, supported by dive-bombers, in an endeavour to recapture an important locality which the Russians took on Sunday. The Germans on Tuesday attacked seven times, using 40 tanks each time,, and then again attacked more strongly at night time, but the Russians’ hold was maintained. The Russians recaptured four villages and annihilated the 14th'German Motorised Infantry Division. The Wehrmacht has tried desperately to halt the offensive by using many tanks, not as a panzer division but as brigades and platoons in/ support of the infantry. Nevertheless, the threatened deterioration in thi's sector remains serious. The absence of place names prevents realisation of the importance of the recent Russian gains in the general plan of the offensive, but one of the latest is the reduction of a complex series of strongpoints which dominated the (country for 15 miles and lay athwart 'the principal German communications.