THREE GREAT BATTLES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 October 1943, Page 4

THREE GREAT BATTLES

ON THE EASTERN FRONT OFFENSIVE IN WHITE RUSSIA GREAT CONFLICT ON MIDDLE DNIEPER GROWING MENACE TO GERMANS IN CRIMEA (By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright) (Received This Day, 10.40 a.m.) LONDON, October 3. The titanic struggle in Russia has resolved itself into three mammoth battles. The latest reports from both Russian and German sources emphasise that the most significant engagements are, firstly, the Red Army’s offensive in White Russia; secondly, the battle for the Middle Dnieper, including Kiev, and thirdly, the Russians’ mighty fighting between Zaporozhe and Melitopol and the Nogaisk steppie, to bottle up the Germans in the Crimea. The Germans’ announcement of the evacuation of the town of Taman indicates that the enemy is not further evacuating troops from the Kuban area to the Crimea across the Taman Peninsula, but correspondents point out that a Russian break-through between Zaporobhe and Melitopol, or the. capture of Melitopol, which is the chief town on the German escape line from the Crimea, will trap all the Germans who have been evacuated from the Kuban to the Crimea.

Today’s German communique says: “We evacuated the town of Taman, unnoticed by the enemy, after destroying all military installations.” The Russians are determinedly attacking over a narrow front between Zaporozhe and the Sea of Azov, says Reuter’s Moscow correspondent. The last remnants of the enemy’s battered divisions in the Kuban bridgehead face final defeat. The Red Army is only 20 miles from the Kerch Straits. Russian sources are uncommunicative about the position in the Middle Dnieper fighting. Moscow correspondents emphasise that there are no Germans, except prisoners, left on the east bank of the Dnieper. The Berlin radio claims that the Russians have not succeeded in establishing new bridgeheads on the east bank and that existing bridgeheads have been narrowed. Reuter’s correspondent says the Red Army, on the ninth day of the White Russian offensive, is inexorably penetrating the deep defences of von Kluge’s “Fatherland line.” A Russian military spokesman declared that the Russian objective is the liberation of the whole of White Russia. He also emphasised that autumn weather may slow down operations, but will not entirely halt the Red Army’s progress. The British United Press reports' that clouds of German planes, dropping hundreds of incendiary bombs, are setting fire to villages behind the White Russian front. Sixty-seven villages have already been razed in a major effort to create a vast scorched earth area between the Vitebsk-Orsha-Gogilev-Gom-el line and the Lithuanian and Latvian borders. The Germans, after rushing up reinforcements, are persistently counter-attacking on the White Russian front, continues the British United Press. The enemy in the Gomel area forced the Russians from a strategic point they had captured. Von Kluge has assembled a tremendous concentration of fire-power on the White Russian front, including numerous 75 millimetre gunes mounted on Mark 3 tank chassis. Tonight’s Soviet communique reports advances of three to five miles in the Gomel sector and three to six miles in the Mogilev sector. The German High Command only today told the German people of the evacuation of Kremenchug, which M. Stalin announced last Thursday. The German announcement added: “We ferried across the Dnieper 45,000 horsedrawn vehicles, 160,000 head of cattle, 110,000 sheep and 62,000 civilians.” The Moscow radio stated that about 40,000 bodies were found in a mineshaft opened up after the recapture of Stalino from the Germans. The bodies nearly filled the mine.-