SAVAGE BATTLES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 June 1943, Page 4

SAVAGE BATTLES

ON THE EASTERN FRONT GERMANS HURLED BACK. AFTER TEMPORARY GAINS AT SOME POINTS. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) (Received This Day, 11.45 a.m.) LONDON, June 3. A savage battle has been fought out on the Kalinin front, where the Germans penetrated to the Russian trenches before they were repulsed. The Germans in one sector, after firing a thousand shells against an advanced Russian position, launched a mass assault. The Russians allowed the Germans to come within 150 yards’ range and then mowed them down with ma-chine-guns and rifles. Some of the enemy succeeded in penetrating the Russian trenches, but they

were eventually forced to retreat. Reuter’s Moscow correspondent says a German attack against Velikiye Luki lasted for several days, in which the Russians were consistently pushed back and lost ground before the Red Army commanders regrouped and struck back and restored the position. The Germans, although back to the point from which they started, struck again and again, but the Russians stood firm. The Germans set great store on the recapture of Velikiye Luki, which is now a Russian danger point, threatening the enemy’s main north-western communications, because only a few miles rvest of Velikiye Luki the MoscowRiga Railway intersects the main lateral line from Leningrad to. the Ukraine, which is the German supply life-line behind their front. The Red Army in the Russian salient between Kursk and Orel succeeded in beating back repeated German efforts, with reinforcements, to retake three important villages which the Russians captured. “The Times” Moscow correspondent reports strong Russian artillery activity south of Isyum and adds that the Red Army, despite the Luftwaffe's desperate efforts to destroy communications, is maintaining the flow of men and supplies, by lorries, across the Donetz to the bridgeheads on the right bank.