LENINGRAD CLEAN-UP

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 118, 14 February 1944, Page 5

LENINGRAD CLEAN-UP

World’s Biggest No-Man’s Land LONDON, February 11. A.R.P, workers from Leningrad and Red Army sappers have already lifted 200,000 mines within sight of the city, says Reuter’s Moscow correspondent, who has just visited an area outside Leningrad which he describes as ‘lhe biggest no-man’s land in the world. The workers are swarming across a huge stretch of country, extending over scores of square miles, trying to clear the wreckage of war from the countryside, which is sown with mines and has not a single habitable house or cultivated field.

Groups of girls, wearing the Leningrad Defence Medal, are helping to remove mines. Specially trained dogs run across the snow, and scratch out mines with their paws. The Germans used to hurl 1500 shells a day into Leningrad, and one day pumped in 2600. It is estimated that a quarter of the buildings in Leningrad have been damaged by shells. A Red Army officer who fought m Finland said the German defences outside Leningrad were stronger than the Mannerheim Line. A typical German position consisted of six lines of trenches with a large number of fire points, .which looked like concrete manholes with armoured shields, sunk to ground-level pits, and fitted with stoves and periscopes. A good deal of the German material bore French trade marks and that ot the Czech Skoda works. The correspondent says that at Peterhof he saw the Tsar’s famous palace, which the Germans had used as barracks. They had stripped the palace of all valuables, down to the parquet floors, and then set fire to it during the retreat.