WINTER FIGHTING

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 January 1943, Page 3

WINTER FIGHTING

HEAVY DIFFICULTIES OVERCOME BY RUSSIANS. 1 MANY SUCCESSES WON IN NIGHT BATTLES. LONDON, January 18. Dispatches from the Russian fronts illustrate the prodigious efforts which the Red Armies are making to press on their offensive in the depth of winter. The Moscow correspondent of “The Times” emphasises the difficulties of moving men and equipment. Guns are being hauled waist-deep in snow, yet the fighting has continued day and night. Most of the Russian successes have been won in night battles. Rosoch was taken in darkness while a blizzard swept the streets. Kototoyak, which crack German regiments were hastily fortifying, was stormed at night time; the Germans desperately resisted, but the Russians isolated them and forced their capitulation. The loss of territory south-west of Stalingrad has robbed the Germans of numerous airfields whence they had been supplying the entrapped divisions. Transport planes carried two tons of bread on each flight to Pitomnik aerodrome, outside Stalingrad, on which the Russians, after its capture, found hundreds of grounded planes. Another 200 transport planes were among booty at Tatsynskaya. The Moscow radio reports that tne Russians have split the Germans in the western sector before Stalingard. Captured documents have revealed that the disappointment after the failure to relieve the entrapped forces caused bad discipline and malingering, the latter being caused by the knowledge that the empty food-carrying planes wee evacuating wounded. HEAVILY REDUCED POPULATION OF LENINGRAD. BY EVACUATION AND WAR LOSSES. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 10.5 a.m.) RUGBY, January 19. The news of the relief of Leningrad has been received in London with particular enthusiasm. The further Russian advance is not expected to be fast, however, since the enemy has had over a year to build up solid defences of every sort, which will not easily be reduced. Leningrad’s population of two millions is reported to have been reduced by nearly two-thirds, mainly through evacuation, but also from bombings, shellings and high mortality as a result of lack of food.