Late War News BATTLES IN MUD AND WATER

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 115, 10 February 1944, Page 6

Late War News BATTLES IN MUD AND WATER

Dnieper Bend Drama ACCOUNT OF GERMAN ROUT (By Telegraph. —Preso assn.—Copyright.) (Received February 10, 1.15 a.m.) LONDON. February 9. Continuing German retreats on the lower Dnieper ace reported by the German overseas news agency, quoting a High .Command spokesman, who said : “German troop movements, aimed at shortening and improving our front in the lower- Dnieper region, are still proDescribing the Nikopol, battle-scene, Moscow radio says: “There are thousands of German bodies on the roads and sinking into the mud. Roads and paths are filled with guns in perfect working order, also hundreds of rifles abandoned by the Germans iu Ineir flight, '.there are ammunition dumps tanks, and stores filled with arms.” The radio quotes a trout-line dispaten reporting that an outflanking movement accomplished by Russian troops who crossed an expanse of water in boats in the middle of a storm was one of the turning-points in the Nikopol attack. The Russians landed in the rear of the enemy and threw them out of strongly-forti-fied positions. ‘‘The Germans fought desperately, and the slime and mud made advances sometimes almost impossible; but even this did not stop us,” the report says. “Then good weather came, and the Red Air Force immediately took advantage of it and wrought indescribable havoc among the German troops at the Dnieper crossing. The Germans threw away their rifles and clung to boats and rafts while our planes gunned and bombed them.” The “Red Star” says the situation of the Germans trapped in the Kanev area is deteriorating rapidly. The Germane cannot get any substantial help from their transport planes. Because of the intensity of the Russian anti-aircraft fire and the heavy ruin which has washed out the few landing fields remaining in their hands much of the ammunition dropped by parachute falls into Russian hands.