MISSING REGIMENT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 26 March 1943, Page 4

MISSING REGIMENT

RUSSIAN TROOPS’ ACTIVITIES GUERILLA TACTICS. CONSIDERABLE DAMAGE DONE. It was taken for granted that the colonel had been killed, writes a war correspondent in “Soviet War News.'' His regiment had been stationed right on the frontier and there had been no news of him since the end of June, 1941. He and his men were regarded as missing. True, there were vague rumours going around about a Red Army group which was still fighting somewhere on the frontier. But nobody knew anything definite. Soviet H.Q. was constantly getting reports of bridges being blown up and trains being derailed in the enemy rear. These reports indicated that the activities were on such a large scale that they could only have been carried out by a powerful and well-or-ganised detachment. But all the known guerilla detachments and parachute-troops operating in this area knew nothing about these explosions and raids. It was. only by a sheer accident that the trail of a large Red Army unit was finally picked up. One day some Red Army men operating behind the enemy’s lines ran into a group of scouts in Soviet uniforms. They asked the scouts what unit they belonged to and who was their commander —and then the missing colonel was found again! IN THE ENEMY REAR.

It appears that almost immediately after the war started the colonel and some of his unit found themselves in the German rear, together with a good supply of arms and ammunition. The unit, whose total destruction had already been announced by the GerI mans, took cover in the forest near the main road along which Nazi armoured cars, staff cars and motorcycles raced back and forth. Gradually they were joined by men and commanders from other - Soviet formations, who brought more arms and ammunition with them. Before long a woman doctor, Anna Kuzmina, made her appearance. The detachment soon grew into a powerful force. Civilians also joined it—the secretary of the district party committee, a railway mechanic, an engine driver, the manager of a restaurant in the local town, reserve commanders who had; not; yet received their calling-up papers when the war broke out. Attacks were made against cross roads and enemy garrisons. The detachment exterminated Germans wherever and whenever possible. On one occasion they raided a Nazi aerodrome, and set fire to a fuel dump. Another time a large group broke right through into the German rear and blew up the track of the main railway line just as a troop train arrived. Five hundred soldiers and officers were killed in the wreck. They dynamited bridges, cut telephone and telegraph wires. One particularly successful operation was the blowing up of an important communication centre in a Nazi-occupied town in Byelorussia. A few days after this they derailed another troop train and hundreds of enemy soldiers met their death. They also attacked and completely routed an enemy force of 150 • men, killing over 90 of them. i HUNTERS ROUTED. Then the Germans began sending one punitive expedition after another against the detachment. Each of these expeditions was routed. On one occasion a furious battle broke out when the Germans surrounded the detachment’s camp in the forest, opening a storm of artillery and trench-mortar fire and bombing the camp from the air. While the Nazi guns were still blazing away the detachment succeeded in breaking through the encirclement and escaped into the depths of the forest. Enemy casualties in this engagement numbered more than 300 killed, including 28 officers. The men of the “missing regiment” , have now been camping for over a c year in dense forests deep in the Ger- ' man rear. They have faced and survived many 7 a tough ordeal. There were days when the ammunition ran : short, days when they would impat- 1 iently await the return of the colonel 1 who had gone off with a group of men 1

in search of fresh supplies. Invariably he came back in high spirits loaded down with thousands of cartridges cap. tured from the Germans. This is one example of how Soviet troops who are counted as “missing keep on fighting hundreds of miles behind the German lines.