PRESSURE GROWS

Auckland Star, Volume LXXIII, Issue 193, 17 August 1942, Page 3

PRESSURE GROWS

TOWARDS STALINGRAD

Rumanian Army Half Casualties British Official Wireless Rec. 1.30 p.m. RUGBY, Aug. 16 While the Germans have undoubtedly made some progress in the Don bend, there is no confirmation in London that there has been a turn for the worse, and it is not believed that the Germans have rounded up many Russians in the river area. As to the German claim to have reached the river itself it is thought that some patrols may have penetrated so far, but shoulder to shoulder fighting is not implied. In the Caucasus it now appears improbable that the Germans are trying to cross the mountains between Checkesk and Sukhum. the Black Sea port about 120 miles south. Here a track leads to a very difficult pass, and there is a gradient of one in six for about ten miles, leading to 9500 ft mountains.

There seems little doubt, however, that the enemy is attempting to cross the hills to the port of Taupse, and meanwhile the thrust to Novorossisk further north does not seem equally strong. If the Germans can reach Taupse they will be to some extent in the rear of Novorossisk, from which the only available exit will be by sea. Novorossisk is well protected by hills, which, it is imagined, are fortified.

Regarding the Germans' claim to have taken Elista, about 180 miles west of Astrakhan and nearly the same distance due south of Stalingrad, it is not now thought that they are trying to drive due east to the big Caspian port, but rather that the advance is turning south or southwest and their forces here may be looked upon as a flank guard to the main forces in the Caucasus.

Red Star, the Soviet military journal, meanwhile declares that the entire Rumanian army, 1,000,000 strong, has been hurled against Russia, and it is estimated that about naif this force is already casualties. T- . . ' 10th and 18th infantrv divisions, it says, and the Ist and i ♦ , P lne brigades have been completely routed.

The fighting capacity of the ls low - Man y resort to self-mflicted wounds and desertion, ine Germans have not fulfilled their to arm t * le Rumanians with modern weapons, but they frequently R uman ian units and i£ and \ m G er man divisions places them to the most dangerous