DESPERATE EFFORTS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 October 1943, Page 3

DESPERATE EFFORTS

BEING MADE BY GERMANS TO AVERT ENCIRCLEMENT OF BIG ARMIES. KRIVOI ROG NEUTRALISED BY AIR BATTERING. (By Telegraph—Press Association— Copyright) LONDON, October 21. The Red Army’s powerful spearhead advancing south across the Dnieper bend is now reported to be 20 miles from the Germans’ escape bottleneck at Krivoi Rog, while the Russians at the other arm of this offensive are winning the battle for Melitopol,, bastion of the German front in the south. The battle is going on uninterruptedly in the funnel south of the main railway from Dnepropetrovsk, says Reuter’s correspondent. The Russian wedge is also broadening on both flanks, with powerful thrusts to the west and also toward Dnepropetrovsk. Fnghting hard to stave off the isolation of.their big armies in the Dnieper bend, the Germans have whipped up the resistance in the past 24 hours, and the present battles are being contested with a ferocity that was only equalled at the height of the battle for Stalingrad. More and more enemy troops are being thrown into the struggle. Krivoi Rog has been neutralised as a communications centre as a result of the pounding by the Soviet air force of the railways radiating from the city.

The British United Press says that in Melitopol, where street fighting has been going on for nine days, a great tank battle is raging round the cathedral, and the enemy is making constant counter-attacks in a last desperate effort to hold the city. However, the Germans are slowly being pressed back in this new. Stalingrad. There is a surprising absence of German infantry at Melitopol. Both here and on the nearby steepes the Germans are mainly relying on armour to hold off the Russians. . _ • An immense air battle is going' on over the whole 200 miles stretch of the west bank of the Dnieper southeast of Kiev. The Germans are sending in more than 100 bombers at a time, and are making tremendous efforts to break through the Russian fighter screens and reach the Dnieper crossings, where vast numbers of men continue to pour to the west bank.

The German defence on the Kiev sector is still very strong/ Captain Sertorius, the German spokesman, stated that violent fighting was progressing south of Kiev, and the Russian pressure north of the city had also increased.

The German news agency tonight admitted that Soviet tanks, effectively supported by Stormoviks, penetrated the German lines north-west of Chernigov on a front of 2J miles. It stated that the Russians in this area attacked with far superior forces.