ANTI-TANK TACTICS.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 61, Issue 227, 8 July 1941, Page 5

ANTI-TANK TACTICS.

BOTTLES OF FLAMING PETROL. ADVANCING FORCES CHECKED. LONDON, July 7. The German High Command has returned to the reticence which marked its communiques in the early stages of the fighting, the latest communique merely stating that operation's against the so-called Stalin Line were proceeding according to plan. . A detailed description of the fighting was given in a. Russian communique issued yesterday. On the Baltic front 10 miles inside Russia from the Latvian frontier on the line of the German drive to Leningrad the Russians say they have counter-attacked, inflicting severe losses on the enemy and destroying hundreds of tanks, with stubborn fighting continuing throughout the night.

Heavy fighting was proceeding at a point 20 miles inside the Russian-Pol-ish border, where the Germans appear to have developed a. new thrust as an additional pincers movement against Smolensk. The Russians claim that the Germans were held and driven back across the river Dvina, leaving thousands of dead Germans and the wreckage of tanks on 'the approaches. Thousands more Germans died in the river. '

East of Minsk heavy fighting was going on as the Germans attempted to push forward toward Smolensk, on the road, to Moscow. At- one point on the road between Minsk and Smolensk the Russians counter-attacked heavily on Saurday. Eighty miles south of this point the Russians have beaten off repeated German attempts to capture an important road point.

Air Raids by the Russians. The Russians are putting up a stubborn resistance just inside the Ukraine. In Bessarabia large raids had been made at several points in Rumania; including the port of Constanta, and the oil fields at Ploesti. Graphic details of the methods used by the Russians to combat German tank attacks are given, in the Moscow newspaper “Pravda.” It says that one battalion of Russian infantry destroyed 15 enemy tanks by hurling bottles of flaming petrol into them. The com mander of the battalion detsroyed 10 tanks himself in this fashion. One difficulty is the shortage of bottles, but it is added that the soldiers overcame this by using their own water flasks filled with petrol. The Russians are ruthlessly pursuing their policy of destroying everything as they retreat, and this work of devastation is also being carried out by forces of Russians -who have been cut off by the German advance. According to a Berlin radio commentator, the Russians burned three forests south-west of Riga.

A Reuter report from Moscow quotes a German prisoner as saying that every hamlet and every hillock sheltered a hiding place for marauding Russian hands, who were; making it difficult for Germans to bring up oil for their tanks. German soldiers, said the prisoner, would make any excuse to avoid night service, which meant that they would almost inevitably be picked off by Russian guerillas. :

The Germans allowed Swedish correspondents to visit parts of the front to give details of the captured territory, which is littered with enormous quantities of destroyed material, including Russian tanks claimed to he of 100 tons. There are also destroyed crops and many German graves. One correspondent said: “The number of German graves justifies the assumption that the Russian campaign is incomparably the most bloody of the whole war.”

The Tass (Russian) News Agency alleges that wholesale German atrocities have begun in frontier towns a,nd districts. German officers after the occupation of a- Polish town chased families into the streets and slashed defenceless women and children to pieces.