GERMAN COLUMNS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 9 February 1943, Page 3

GERMAN COLUMNS

MOVING WESTWARD FROM ROSTOV

ATTEMPTED DELAYING ACTIONS.

PROSPECT OF ENEMY DISASTER IN DONETZ AREA.

(By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, February 8.

The Soviet midnight communique reported a good Russian foothold on the Sea of Azov by the capture of half a dozen places south and south-east of Yeisk along the northern shore of the Boisug Inlet. Three bridgeheads have now been established on the southern bank of the upper Donetz, and the Russians are driving deeper into the rich industrial area. •

Their capture of Kramatorsk is important. It was one of the biggest steel and chemical centres in the Donetz Basin. It was heavily defended but was stormed from two sides. Last ■night these forces continued to advance. The Red Air Force last night sighted long German columns moving westward from Rostov. The Stockholm correspondent of the “Daily Express” interprets this report as supporting the German hints that they are evacuating Rostov because “it is no longer vital,” and it coincides with dispatches from Moscow stating that the Germans flung in panzers in a desperate bid to hurl back the Red Army.

A terrific tank battle which developed a few miles south of Rostov may have been due to a German attempt to save the city or to delay the Russian advance sufficiently long to enable the evacuation of the German columns. Medium enemy tanks attacked the Russian flanks, and the conflict spread over an area of five miles. Russian Klim Voroshilovs then brushed the enemy aside, overrunning the defences.

Russian planes, striking behind the battlefront, swooped on German reinforcements, playing havoc in the ranks with bombs and machine-guns.

Dealing with the position on the Voronezh front, the Moscow correspondent of “The Times” says that unless the Germans are able to halt or delay the Russian attack their chance of an orderly withdrawal from the Donetz appears to have gone and they risk a calamity surpassing even the Sixth Army’s at Stalingrad. J. L. Garvin, the “Sunday Express” writer, says that the Russians threaten to engulf the enemy in the Donetz area and to regain the industrial Ukraine . He adds that the loss of Kursk and Kharkov would force the Germans to fall back to the Dnieper River.