FANNING OUT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 31 December 1942, Page 4

FANNING OUT

BEYOND KOTELNIKOVO SOVIET TANKS AND MOBILE TROOPS. ADVANCE OF 40 MILES. ’ LONDON. December 30. A Reuter message states that Soviet tanks! and mobile troops are reported to be 40 miles beyond Kotelnikovo. They are fanningout westward. NAZI RESISTANCE FEEBLE AT MANY POINTS. HALF A MILLION MEN MENACED. (Received This Day, 12.35 p.m.) LONDON, December 30. . Two powerful Russian drives are making remarkably rapid progress and are now threatening the key German base of Rostov. One, in the Middle Don area, is approaching Kamensk and the other is pushing towards Salyst. The Middle Don drive, in which two columns have bypassed Millerovo to the east and west, has already cut the railway north of Kamensk, which is threatened 'from the north and east. Between these two drives, other columns are moving on Tsymlyanskaya. The British United Press Moscow correspondent says the German retreat to Rostov can now be described as a debacle. Only in the Middle Don is there evidence of stiffening German resistance. Elsewhere, especially before Stalingrad, where twenty-two divisions are encircled, the German resistance grows feebler daily. ’ Reuter's military writer says it is reliably estimated that fifty to sixty divisions, totalling between 500,000 and 660,000 men. are threatened by the Red Army sweep towards Rostov. The “Red Star” declares that, following on the capture of Kotelnikovo, the Germans are hastily withdrawing south-westwards, and are* trying to break off contact but the Russians are ceaselessly pursuing the enemy and liberating villages every hour.