HEAVILY MENACED

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 November 1943, Page 4

HEAVILY MENACED

GERMANS IN KRIVOI ROG. VAIN ENEMY ATTEMPTS TO RALLY IN SOUTH. (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) (Received This Day, 10.50 a.m.) LONDON, November 4. A tense battle is going on outside Krivoi Rog. Reads leading into the town are strewn with abandoned German war material. The Berlin correspondents of Swedish newspapers report that new Russian concentrations' have been observed at Krivoi Rog, and it is believed that the Russians will hurl in even more terrible masses in an attempt to close the pincers. The Berlin radio stated that the Russians south-west of Dnepropetrovsk launched fresh attacks against the German bolt positions, and Reuter’s Moscow correspondent declared that the Germans in Nikopol, apart from a few isolated pockets, are grouping all that is left of their powerful army, which was torn to pieces almost overnight. The first results of the great victory are already becoming apparent as the Germans feel the weight of the Red Air Force bombers—using the conveniently nearby airfield chain south of the Dnieper—against their vital NikolayevApostolovo Railway, and struggle to regroup their forces for a defence line which is one and a half times as long as the old Zaporozhe-Melitopol position. The Germans are hanging on around Nikopol only to gain time for a complete withdrawal of their forces from this sector. This they failed to do at Khakovka. Their chances, with the river crossings under constant air pounding, of saving more than a small part of the troops at Nikopol are growing more and more remote.