APPALLING FIGHTING CONDITIONS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXII, Issue 82, 3 October 1941, Page 5

APPALLING FIGHTING CONDITIONS

LONDON, October 2. There is little news of the fighting in Russia, but neither side is giving the other any respite on the whole vast front from the Arctic to the Crimea. In the Murmansk sector, in appalling conditions of weather and country, the Germans are still trying to reach the only Arctic port through which supplies can reach Russia throughout the winter. British correspondents say that the Russians have beaten back German attacks on the line of the River List, about 40 miles west of Murmansk. Reports throw doubt on the Finnish claim to have taken the White Sea port of Kandalaksha, on the Leningrad-Murmansk railway. In the Ukraine, tremendous fighting' goes on as the Germans try to drive northwards from the Dnieper Basin into the heart of the industrial area and southwards down the Perekop Isthmus into the Crimea. Odessa stands as firm as ever, and the Germans complain that Rumanian progress is very slow over the battlefield littered with the dead of both sides. ,

It is reported that fierce battles have been raging for five days in one sector on the Leningrad front. The Russians are reported to have forestalled a German attack by 40 minutes and taken a strongly-forti-fied point. They followed up the atiack with medium and heavy tanks and aircraft. The Russians have officially claimed the capture of four more villages in the Leningrad area and an important strategic hill near Staraya Russa, about 130 miles south of the city where Marshal Voroshilov has been operating outside the Leningrad ring. The only German report claims that heavy Russian counter-attacks were •epulsed.

The enemy are said to be rushing up

reinforcements against Leningrad with such speed that there is no time to issue them with overcoats or form them into regiments.

In the central sector more Russian counter-attacks on a small scale are reported from Moscow. In one village two German battalions were routed. Soviet scouts had made contact behind the German lines with guerrilla detachments consisting entirely .of women.

The approaches to Kharkov are said to be held by the Russian forces along the. east bank of the Dnieper while the Germans prepare a new full-scale offensive from the Dnieper bend 80 miles to the south. The report that the Russians hold the east bank of the river is confirmed bf German stories that Soviet troops tried to cross the river in a sector held by Hungarians.