GUERILLA WAR

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 281, 27 November 1941, Page 10

GUERILLA WAR

FOREST RAIDERS GERMAN STALKING IN "OCCUPIED" ZONES i

(By PETER PAVLENKO)

LENINGRAD FRONT, Oct. 5. I am lying on the shore of the River Volkhov. Novgorod lies on the other side of the river. The ancient Yurevsky Monastery, the houses and outskirts of which have been burned to the ground, is plainly visible.

A week ago 300 Germans attempted to cross over to our bank of the Volkhov, but they were repulsed and now they limit their activities to fierce artillery shelling of the advance lines of our defence positions.

The Germans have declared the whole extensive Novgorod area and the region about Lake Ilmen long since occupied. . Three days ago I was at Lake Ilmen. The Germans regard this locality as occupied and our troops, which to the present moment are active here, as destroyed or surrounded. To surround or destroy military units in these dense forests, studded with lakes, is a difficult matter.

These forests, rivers and lakes resemble those in Finland. That probably is why the Germans have summoned 1000 Finns to aid them as forest specialists.

Forest Roars with Shooting

The woods are full of guerillas and the forest roars with shooting. That is the Germans shooting at the forest as if it was the very devil. The fear of guerillas is so great that German patrols have been ordered to shoot m the air at night at regular intervals of an hour. Columns choosing places near the forest to camp for the night must first shoot at the outskirts of the woods before selecting their camp site. As a result of this shooting continues incessantlv, and the guerillas have an easy time in I finding their victims.

Just as soon as the German shooting dies down there is a new wave of thunder—the sound of guerillas firing at sleeping Germans.

Sometimes during the progress of a battle Russian troops, active deep in the rear of the enemy, really seemed to be surrounded. But as experience has proved in the forest he who surrounds, is himself surrounded. In order to close the circle it is necessary to know the ways and by-ways of the forest and, of course the Germans do not.

At times their vanguards come upon the path of our units and they think they have encircled the units fighting ahead of them. But the | encircled units keep on fighting. A few days ago I spoke to five Red I Army soldiers who spent fifty-two days behind the German lines. Having been cut off from their units they voluntarily became scouts and guerillas. They became forest raiders, destroying German communications and shooting at staff machines. They destroyed twelve automobiles and five motor-cycles blew up a gasoline depot, killed twenty signal corps officers, removed many miles of telephone and telegraph cable, blew up two bridges and reconnoitred the position and numbers of German garrison and then returned to their own units full j of optimism and enthusiasm.

Gnerillas Are Submarines

They had armed local collective farmers with weapons seized from the Germans and established connections between various guerilla groups, fighting independently.

Colonel Bogdanovich, who commands detachments in the very areas claimed by the Germans to be occupied, told me that he has thousands of troops operating in the "occupied" zones.

. one inch of the Novgorod forests had been conquered. ' Evervwhere the struggle, not for life but ' ls . tal <ing place. A solid tront does not exist, and he who uses roads instead of the pathless forests, !.rn^S° pu points instead of the i j e F ness , P an be compared to a rudderless ship helplessly sailing the ocean. The guerillas are submarines. I he forest depths are entirely theirs. 2StoSftK^ requlre years to .