WAY OF ESCAPE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 24 December 1943, Page 3

WAY OF ESCAPE

SOUGHT BY THOUSANDS OF GERMANS FROM TIGHTENING RUSSIAN NOOSE FROZEN GROUND GIVING FREEDOM OF MANOEUVRE (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 10.0 a.m.) RUGBY, December 23. South of Nevel thousands of Germans are struggling to escape from the tightening noose of Russian encirclement, states a Moscow message. All efforts to relieve isolated garrisons by massed land and air attacks have failed. In one sector over 1,000 Germans tried to escape through a defile between half-frozen marshes. Soviet troops met them with riflebutts, knives and even spades, and

forced them back into the trap. Gangs of Todt Labour Organisation workers have been rushed to the break through area to fell pinewoods in the path of the Soviet infantry. Festoons of newly-placed barbed wire covered the landscape overnight and fresh minefields were’ sown with frantic haste. German efforts to make coun-ter-manoeuvres behind, the front are being paralysed by Soviet cavalry and tank patrols, which are penetrating in

all directions, despite every kind of obstacle.

The most active enemy resistance is being met on the approaches to railway lines and highways. Twenty and more counter-attacks were reported from some of these sub-sectors on Wednesday. In the Jlobin sector, wide areas of marshland are now sufficiently frozen over for large-scale mechanised warfare. Tanks and motorised infantry have freedom of movement in practically all directions off the roads. The Germans have seized the opportunity to attempt to break through with the object of disrupting Soviet dispositions and removing the threat to several important strongholds. In one sub-sec-tor they tried to break through in two directions, with 100 heavy tanks and masses of infantry. Violent fighting is still continuing in this area.

Further Moscow messages state that 234,000 German officers and men were killed by guerillas in White Russia from the beginning of the war to November this year, according to the Soviet information Bureau. The guerillas killed 16 generals, they derailed 3,677 troop drains and destroyed 2,571 railway and road bridges, 519 tanks and armoured cars, 243 aircraft, 300 guns, 9,000 mo-tor-cars and 49 dumps of war material.