SLOWED DOWN

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 October 1943, Page 3

SLOWED DOWN

AS RESULT OF AUTUMN RAINS RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE. LIMITED ADVANCES STILL ' BEING MADE. LONDON, October 5. Fighting on the Russian front has now definitely entered the autumn stage. A correspondent points out that the Soviet offensive is still continuing, but that, instead of advancing five to ten miles a day on a fifty mile front, the Russian troops are now moving forward half a mile at a time on a narrow sector. A Soviet communique reports local engagements in the Vitebsk direction, where 46 towns and villages have been occupied. On other fronts lively patrol activity is reported. Yesterday the Russians knocked out 53 enemy tanks and shot down 48 aircraft. GREAT EFFORT TO BREACH ENEMY LINE IN WHITE RUSSIA PAUSE ALONG THE DNIEPER (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, October 4. The Red Army, racing the autumn rains, is concentrating all its energies in an attempt to roll over the German strongholds of Mogilev and Gomel and breach Field-Mar-shal Von Kluge’s defensive line in White Russia. While the two crucial drives against Gomel and Mogilev are forcing a way toward the objectives, the Red Army is holding its hand in the north against Vitebsk, and there is a pause also in the fighting opposite Kiev and along the Dnieper. Only about 20 miles separates the spearheads of the Russian columns from Mogilev, but the country is veined with rivers, each of which is a German rampart as well as a physical obstacle. The battle for Mogilev is being fought out on the north bank of the Soj Riv.er below Cherikov, in the small area bounded by rivers, railways, and highways. The Germans here are putting up a most strenuous defence in an effort to hold the northern bank of the Soj. Penetration by the Russians would open up the possibility of rolling back the German right wing.