VAST BATTLE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 September 1943, Page 3

VAST BATTLE

UNDER WAY ALONG DNIEPER SOVIET TROOPS ENTER WHITE RUSSIA DIMINISHING GERMAN HOLD ON EAST BANK ATTEMPTS TO EXTRICATE REMAINING FORCES (By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright) LONDON, September 27. While a vast battle is under way along the Dnieper, and some small bridgeheads are believed to have been established on the right bank below Kiev, the Red Army has advanced on all other sectors.

Today, exactly three months after the summer campaign opened with the German offensive against the Kursk salient, Red Army forces have entered White Russian Soviet Republic by capturing a town 75 miles west of Bryansk. Another important centre has been occupied only 30 miles east of Gomel.

The Russians have cleared practically the whole of the east bank of the Dnieper below Kiev as far as Zaporozhe, says the Moscow correspondent of the British United Press. The Germans are desperately clinging in strong pockets in the Kremenchug and Dnepropetrovsk areas, where they are trying to get out the remaining forces and transport them across the Dnieper.

The five Russian columns which converged on Smolensk were composed of as many as 250,000 troops supported by 10 brigades of tanks and masses of fighters and bombers, state reports reaching London. The British United Press Moscow correspondent says the Russians are pouring through the shattered German defences round Smolensk and opening a formidable drive for Vitebsk and Gomel.