LIGHTNING SWEEP

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 November 1943, Page 4

LIGHTNING SWEEP

MADE BY THE COSSACKS FROM MELITOPOL TO DNIEPER ESTUARY. RETREATING GERMAN ARMIES TORN TO PIECES. (By Telegraph-—Press Association—Copyright) (Received This Day, 11.35 a.m.) LONDON, November 4. Moscow correspondents continue to exalt the Cossacks’ lightning sweep from Melitopol as one of the greatest cavalry drives in history. The British United Press states that General Mirichenko held the Cossacks in readiness until tanks and mechanised units had punched great holes in the German lines at Melitopol. Then the Cossacks poured through like a lava flow from a volcano. Detailing the rout, a British United Press correspondent says the Cossacks are pinning down the exhausted Germans against the sands of the Dnieper Estuary, where the tattered remnants of crack German regiments are dying in hundreds in the lagoons and sand dunes as the Cossacks parcel them off and cut them to pieces. Hundreds of Germans threw themselves into the Dnieper’s icy waters in an endeavour to escape, but Red Army tommy-gun-ners shot them as they swam. The Germans were again paralysed by the last war’s cry of “The Cossacks are coming!” causing thousands- to surrender. Vast quantities of equipment have been captured. The rout is only comparable to General Brusilov’s destruction of the Austrian army in 1916. The British United Press correspondent, summing up, says the campaign on the Lower Dnieper is nearly over. Little more than mopping-up remains to be done. GERMAN LOSSES IN SUMMER AND AUTUMN CAMPAIGNS. TOTAL OF-2,700,000 MEN. (Received This Day, 1.15 p.m.) LONDON, November 4. The Germans, between July 5 and November 4 have lost 2,700,000 killed, wounded and in prisoners, .of whom 900,000 have been killed, declared an official Soviet review of the Great Russian sum-mer-autumn campaign, broadcast by the Moscow radio. During the same period the Red Army, on 1,200 miles of front, advanced 180 to 270 miles and liberated 140,000 square miles of territory of the greatest economic, military and strategical value, and also liberated 38,000 inhabited places, including 162 towns. The expulsion of the Germans from White Russia has begun. The Red Army has routed 144 enemy divisions, including 28 tank and motorised divisions and has taken prisoner 98,000 of the enemy.