LENINGRAD'S FIGHT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 February 1943, Page 4

LENINGRAD'S FIGHT

LIFE IN BESIEGED CITY SPIRIT OF CONFIDENCE. MANY SERVICES FUNCTIONING. The war has not spoiled the peerless loveliness of Leningrad’s streets. They are oerhans a little less crowded. Shells have torn gaps in many buildings. but have not distorted the splendid, stern outlines of the city. The streets are kept clean and in good order. The Nevsky Prospect (Leningrad’s main street) hums with life. When the guns stop booming, one can almost forget that things are not normal. The bootblacks at the street corners have plenty of customers. The Baltic seamen like their boots shiny. Bicycles swarm in the streets. Commanders, workers, schoolboys and matronly housewives all bowl along together. There are still some flowers in the parks, but cabbages and dugouts are now an inevitable part of the scenery. A truck stops near a restaurant and the driver unloads blocks of ice. On the door of the restaurant the menu is pinned up: codfish soup with macaroni, roast pork with vegetables, cocoa. SHELLS OVERHEAD, Guns begin to boom and shells whizz overhead. There is an explosion nearby. The pavements are deep in glass. There is a crater in the pavement and two’ persons have been killed. An old man passing by has had both his legs torn off. The crowd looks on as nurses bandage the victim. They are grimly silent. The cannonade grows heavier, rattling all the window panes. Leningraders, whose ears have grown very sharp, can distinguish the roar of Soviet naval guns in the chorus of noise. We learn later that the Baltic Fleet gunners have been supporting an infantry attack. At night we hear the result. Our naval guns have smashed four German guns and six batteries and silenced six more. Our infantry have recaptured a strategically important point. Here in Leningrad we have a dress-circle view of the front line. NOTED SNIPER. Everyone in the city knows sniper Nikolai Krasnoshapka, who is stationed in a trench on the sector closest to Leningrad . A few days ago the Germans counter-attacked. Eleven times Krasnoshapka fired; 11 Nazis lay dead. When the Germans crept up closer he showered them with grenades. When a splinter wounded his breast, putting his right arm out of action, he flung grenades with his left hand. Dead Nazis kept piling up a few yards away. He did not move a step back until reinforcements arrived. The guns are not often silent. Day and night the battle continues, on land, on sea and in the air. Hoardings reflect the life of the city. The theatre of the Red Banner Baltic Fleet is performing Simonov’s “The Russians.” The Philharmonic Society announces a Chaikovsky concert. An exhibition of the work of Leningrad architects during 1941-1942 has just been opened. The public library is open as usual. On September 1 the schoolchildren went back io their studies for the new term. The memory of last winter’s hunger and cold is softened. Today there is enough bread, and we have plenty of vegetables. PREPARATIONS FOR WINTER. But we are not going to meet next winter’s cold unprepared. We are felling timber in the forests and salvaging wood from blitzed buildings. Every Leningrader is resolved to stock in four cubic yards of firewood, two for his personal use and two for the municipality.

We are preparing for winter as though for a battle. Everyone is defending the city according to his ability. Everyone is at his post, one in the trenches, another in the factory. Though many Leningrad factories have been evacuated, we still have a considerable industry. The smoke still curls up from the city’s tall smoke-stacks. Besieged Leningrad still controls a section of railway, thqugh a short one. The railwaymen have built an armoured train, which is now in the front line. They themselves manned it. They smashed several enemy nill-boxes and fire-points only the other day. Leningrad today is inhabited by people of a special mould. They have endured for a year already. They will withstand any fresh attack and break down any blockade,