RED LAVA

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 July 1943, Page 4

RED LAVA

GERMAN TROOPS DECEIVED SURPRISED. BY RUSSIANS. BLIZZARD TAKES ITS TOLL. (By Evgeny Krieger in “Soviet War News.”) . Far behind is the countryside where, a few weeks ago, Soviet guns thundered in preparation for the offensive. We are now in the area which the Germans considered their deep, safe rear,. They made themselves thoroughly at home north of Kursk. They Germanised the sign-posts, Germanised the street names, put numbers on everything, took stock of everything, entered everything in their books, and seal ed the lot with a German seal. Not to be touched by Russians . . . entrance forbidden to Russians. But suddenly the Russians did touch —with bayonet and shell. And sud 1 - denly the Russians did enter —with tanks and infantry. There were parquet floors in the Generals’ quarters. The bottle lying about contained no cheap soldiers’ wine. Cinzano, fine cognac, champagne—they did themselves well. They had quiet, private offices. The officers lived in cosy flats. Under their beds were trunks crammed with presents for their girl friends. They were absolutely certain of tomorrow. It was quiet a home from home. One officer, only a few days 1 before the Red Army arrived, ordered the owner of the house where he was billeted to keep things in order. “I’m off to Kursk for about a fortnight,” he said. The owner of the house'never gets tired of telling that story to his present tenants—a bunch of Red Army commanders. How badly those pedantic Germans were deceived by the merry drumsticks against the tight-stretched skin! The Russians advance through the snow against the German defences. The Russians surmount them in stubborn fighting. Without lingering at the seats of particularly violent resistance, the Russians outflank them, surround their strong-points, disrupt communications, cut highways and railways between the towns, and then spread in the German rear like flaming lava.

RUSSIANS EVERYWHERE. Russians to the right, Russians to the left, Russians everywhere. One officer prisoner said at his interrogation: “We know all about your artillery, your tanks, your infantry. But what is most terrific of all is your confident, silent forging ahead, sometimes without as much as a single shot, passing our centres of resistance, where in the end we find ourselves surrounded. Then it’s too late to retreat.” Every yard of Soviet land will have to be wrested from the German with blood. But the spectre of Stalingrad looms before every German on the Soviet front. Every Russian village may become a little Stalingrad for him. If he delays even an hour too long, there will be no way out. North of Kursk I saw how the cosy rear of the German army had suddenly become a kingdom of death. So one dies from a stroke or paralysis. Death overtook thousands of Germans as they marched in columns along the roads, packed in trains that backed out westwards from the stations. Prisoners speak of the indescribable ghastliness of the moment when the Germans and Hungarians sensed the Russians in their rear. Soviet tanks would appear suddenly at the head and tail of every column; sappers riding tanks would blow up the track at both ends. There was no way out. There was nowhere to break through. The enemy soldiers jumpped out of their trucks and retreated—into the snow, into the cold, into the bleak deserted kingdom of death. SCENE OF DEVASTATION. Dead men in the snow. Strings of motionless railway cars ripped open by shells. Thousands of abandoned trucks crammed with ammunition, medicines, provisions. Armoured trains left idle at wayside stations. Hospitals inhumanly abandoned by the Germans before the Red Army’s arrival, full of wounded men—all frozen to death.

The Red Army man advances in any weather. It is not easy to march over roadless terrain through snowstorms, dragging self and rifle out of the white swamp. Ask a German what a blizzard is? He will make a sour face, and say that a blizzard is very much wind and snow, so much that you can’t stand on your feet and must crawl underground and sit shivering in a dugout —because no war is possible in this white hell. The Russians must be blinded by the blizzard, too, and there will be no battle. Pray God to make it so that the blizzard bars the way to the Russian battle.

North of Kursk, during long months of lull, they laboured like devils, dug trenches, fixed trainloads of barbed wire on poles in front of their trenches, filled the ground with mines, put a machine-gun into every crevice. Then they sat back, reassured to think that a shell would burst wherever a Russian dared to tread, that a bullet would whizz whenever a Red Army man dared to take a gulp of air.

DEATH FROM BLIZZARD.

Then the blizzard began. It streaked along the ground in the quiet, creeping wind, then rose with fury, flung heavy snowflakes in people’s faces, wallowed on the roads, lunged at the black clouds and ripped them open as with a knife, so that they spilled out their burden on the earth, on the fields, on the forests, on men. And everything went white, everything went up in a flutter, everything howled. Things far and near, visible and invisible, got mixed. The February storm screamed with a thousand voices. Death came ouf of the blizzard, guided by the faint green glow of a Russian compass. He rose before the German trenches so suddenly and terribly that officers and men ran back to their second line without firing a shot. The Hitlerites are being driven westward, and faithful death goes with them in their retreat. They made him the companion of their advance,_ the god of their crimes, their executions, their victories. Now he refuses to part' with them.