GUERILLA WAR IN RUSSIA

Dominion, Volume 9, Issue 2723, 18 March 1916, Page 3

GUERILLA WAR IN RUSSIA

DARING BANDS TERRORISE THE HUNS. MERCILESS VENGEANCE FOR OUTRAGES. ■ Guerilla bands have sprung up against the Germans owing to the lafcter's deeds of violence, pillage, and murder. In the Pinsk marshes whole regiments of Volhynian partisans. says a writer in-the "Bourse Gazette, have been brought into the field by a local landed proprietor, and in Southern Polesie the enemy is compelled to remain constantly on the alert. Between 40 and 50 formidable detachments have been operating in Polesio. At first the men composing these bands were armed for the most part with axes and scythes, and only a few carried rifles. The majority of them are local peasants, who know every path in the district in which they operate. After every raid they concoal their movements so well that there has not been a single case in which the Germans have managed to overtake them. The most popular partisan detachments are those of Yan Topolnitzky, Ignatius Zabolotka, and Igor Okhrinitchouk. The Topolnitzky band numbers 40 men, who operate on foot. The head of this band is an elderly man, a refugee from the government <?f Kalish. Until July he lived with his wife and 18-year-old daughter, but the Germans descended on the placo and Topolnitzky's wife was killed. The girl was seized and carried off, and Topolnitzky Hod into the forests, where he met men as desperate as himself. One evening a peasant, captured by the soldiers of a Landwehr regiment, told the officer that he knew where Topolnitzky's band was hiding. "They are sleeping, and you can seize them all alive," he said. The German officer left about 40 men behind, and went with the peasant and a force of 150 men to take the bold loader. 'J!he guide led the Germans into the marshes and disappeared. At the same time volleys came from both flanks, and the Germans fell in Only 50 escaped. In the meantime' the village which harboured the remaining Gor-, mans was set on fire by. the guerilla chief. . .

The Austro-Germans have had cause also to fear the chief of another hand, Ignatius Zabolotka, a peasant. Should this man fall into their hands they would probably invent some peculiarly horrible form of death for him; The Germans captured a member of his band and hung him. . A note was pinned to his clothes which stated in bad Russian that his fate would be shared By all those who injured the German soldiers. Soon the. Germans who were quartered in the village of Vignaviky were startled by seeing the body of their colonel hanging from a tree near his hut. A lieutenant and eight sol-, fliers were hanging from other trees close by. Okhrinitchouk's detachment has been operating for some timo in the neiglibourhod ot Kovel.