CHAOTIC SCENES ON BATTLEFIELD

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 86, 5 January 1940, Page 9

CHAOTIC SCENES ON BATTLEFIELD

Aftermath Of Finns’ Victory

RUSSIAN ARMIES’ RUIN

Helsinki Reports Serious Munition Shortage (By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright.) (Received January 4, 7.5 p.m.) LONDON. January 3. The conditions in the Soviet lines of retreat are becoming chaotic while the ruin of the overthrown armies offers a-ghastly spectacle, says the “Daily Telegraph’s” correspondent at the front, dealing with the aftermath of the battle of Tolvajarvi. He says that countless Russian dead are lying as they tell beneath newly-fallen snow. Shattered tanks and lorries and heaps of debris are found all along the battlefield’s main artery leading to Lake Algajarvi. There the hillside forests are full of snowcovered corpses, wiped out by machine-guns. All bote gasmasks. • 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 that all that remains of the 17,000 men comprising the division trapped at Kiantajarvi are 2000 wanderers in the 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 the battle are arriving from Siberia, but the Pans wireless states that they will reach their destinations decimated. Many have been shot for insubordination. The Finns have now smashed five out of 12 separate Russian thrusts between Lake Ladoga and the Arctic and have 'established a better strategic position along the frontier than they have had at any time since the outbreak of the war. New Attack on Isthmus. A Finnish communique states that Soviet gunfire on the Karelian Isthmus prefaced fierce infantry attacks, which the Finnish artillery and infantry fire repulsed. Other attacks met with a similar fate. Au earlier Helsinki report statea that scattered bodies of Russians on the isthmus front were digging trenches, and conflict in that area was developing into trench warfare. A Moscow communique reports that nothing of importance occurred and planes merely made reconnaissance flights. , The semi-official Finnish news agency says that the Russians lost 400 tanks and 150 planes in December. The Rome radio declares that M. Stalin has ordered the Red Army leaders to spare neither men nor materials in a new effort to crush the Finns. The Finns are fighting on eight or, including the air and sea—lo fronts. Their exhausting ammunition and the problem of fresh supplies, despite those captured, is serious, states a Helsinki report. The Russians, on the other hand, seem to possess inexhaustible resources. The air front extends over almost the whole of Finland, and the Russians employ 300 planes daily but have achieved nothing of military importance. Finnish aircraft claim to have penetrated far behind Leningrad and to have dropped millions of photographically illustrated pamphlets showing the humane treatment of Russian prisoners. Finnish pilots also attacked the Russian base at Liinahamari, the port of Petsamo on the Arctic Ocean, apparently using fast foreign bombers. Latest messages state that all land operations in the north of Finland are at a standstill on account of the bad weather, but in the centre and south the conditions have improved. Helsinki and several ports on the Gulf of Finland were again bombed by Soviet planes. Several buildings were destroyed, but there were few civilian casualties. —By radio.