UKRAINIAN EAGLE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 March 1943, Page 6

UKRAINIAN EAGLE

“DEEDS OF “GENERAL ORLENKO” • FAMOUS GUERILLA LEADER. (By Vsevolod Ivanov, in “Soviet War News.”) You will search Red Army lists in vain for any mention of “General Orlenko.” He fights at the head of a guerilla detachment in the forests and steppes of the Ukraine. Before the war he knew nothing of soldiering. Indeed, all his inclinations were to a peaceful, contemplative life. But after the German invasion he remained behind, and has earned such renown as a partisan that his countrymen named him “The Eagle” (“Orlenko” comes from the Russian word “oryol,” meaning eagle). . He is only 38, but he looks much older. Alt the members of his detachment are still younger than he. They have come through great hardships. Last winter, hounded by the Germans, they spent five months roaming the forests, and for three months had practically nothing to eat but horseflesh. The Germans distributed leaflets alleging that Moscow had been taken long ago, and that the Nazi army had crossed the Volga. Orlenko and his comrades smiled. They tramped nearly 2,000 miles through the Ukraine. The detachment grew powerful and numerous. Now Orlenko has not only machine-guns, but artillery batteries, including heavy guns: He came to Moscow recently, and now he wears the Order of Lenin and the gold star of a Hero of the Soviet Union. Let me end with his own words, quoted in “Pravda’ of December 25, the 25th anniversary of Soviet Ukraine: — “Our detachment has fought the invaders from the first days of the German occupation. We give them no peace day or night. We have killed over 5,000 of them, including two generals, four colonels and 465 officers. We have derailed over 50 trains packed with troops, tanks and ammunition. We have wrecked 40 bridges, smashed up 150 cars and blown up 13 railway engines; 140 railway trucks exploded on mines we had planted on the lines. “We are ceaselessly at work wrecking railways, telephone and telegraph communications. We have captured enough weapons and ammunition to arm hundreds of new guerillas. “Thousands of poods of grain, loads of hay and cattle seized by the Germans for shipment to Germany were recaptured from them and returned to the villagers. “Traitors xyho sell out to the enemy die the death of dogs. We have routed 78 police gangs. The aim of our present operations is to aid the Red Army advance in the Stalingrad area, on the central front and in the middle Don and Northern Caucasus zone.”