TERRIBLE AFTERMATH OF SOVIET RETREAT

Press, Volume LXXVI, Issue 22910, 5 January 1940, Page 7

TERRIBLE AFTERMATH OF SOVIET RETREAT

Snow Covers Countless Dead

AMMUNITION SUPPLIES A PROBLEM FOR FINNS

(rXITED PRESS ASSOCIATION —COPYRIGHT.) (Received January 4, 8.30 p.m.) LONDON, January 3. "Conditions in the Soviet lines of retreat are becoming: chaotic, while the ruin of the overthrown armies offers a ghastly spectacle," says the correspondent of the "Daily Telegraph" at the front. Dealing with the aftermath of the battle of Tolvajarvi he says: "Countless Russian dead are lying as they fell beneath new-fallen snow. Shattered tanks, lorries, and heaps of debris were found all along the battlefields. On the main artery leading to Lake Aglajarvi there were hillside forests full of the snowcovered corpses of troops wiped out by machine-guns. All bore gas-masks. There must have been many Finnish dead, but these have already been removed for burial." The correspondent of the Associated Press of Great Britain at Kiantajarvi says: "All that remain of the 17,000 men comprising, the Soviet division trapped at Kiantajarvi are 2000 wanderers in forests and snowdrifts where Finns mounted on skis relentlessly pursue them. Captives declared that they were never told against whom they were going to fight. They are mostly collective farmers with brief military training and seem bewildered by their fate." Russian reinforcements to repair the ravages of battle are arriving from Siberia, but the Paris wireless states that they will reach their destinations decimated. Many have been shot for insubordination. The Finns, fighting on eight fronts—lo including the air and sea—are exhausting their ammunition. The problem of obtaining fresh supplies, in spite of captures, is serious. The Russians, on the other hand, seem to possess inexhaustible resources. The air front extends over almost the whole of Finland. The Russians employ 300 aeroplanes daily, but have achieved nothing of military importance.

The Rome radio declares that M. Josef Stalin has ordered the Red Army leaders to spare neither men nor materials in a new effort to crush theCPinns. The semi-official Finnish news agency states that the Russians lost 400 tanks and 150 aeroplanes during December. A blizzard continues to sweep the Karelian Isthmus, immobilising the Russian offensive against the Mannerheim Line. The Finns have now smashed five of 12 Russian thrusts between Lake Ladoga and the Arctic, and established a better strategic position along the frontier than at any time since the outbreak. The scattered Russians on the isthmus front are digging trenches.