Enemy Blows In Don Bend

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIV, Issue 41, 17 August 1942, Page 5

Enemy Blows In Don Bend

RUSSIAN WITHDRAWAL IN SOUTH

LONDON, August 16. Continued German attacks to force a way; through to Stalingrad are being held.

The fiercest fighting is still taking place in the Don bend, where enemy tanks, motorised infantry, and mobile artillery are making a tremendous effort to break through to Stalingrad. They are being held by Soviet forces, and have not yet been able to cross the river.

The threat to Astrakhan by enemy forces moving south-east of"lCotelnikovo has not increased during the past 24 hours. Enemy progress has been stopped for the time being in all but one of the battle zones in the north Caucasus.

Further south at Mineralnye Vody the Russians have been forced to make a further withdrawal. The Germans have got to within 150-miles of the Grozny oilfields.

Severe fighting is taking place in the Maikop area, at Cherkesk, and at Krasnodar, and the Germans have made no further progress in the past 24 hours.

At Krasnodar, in particular, where the enemy have been held for days along the north bank of the Kuban River, all efforts to establish bridgeheads have been smashed by Soviet forces. The' Russians are taking full advantage of many natural obstacles —rivers, heights, ravines. In the Voronezh area the Russians still have the best of the fighting. The Soviet forces are steadily improving their position, and heavy German casualties continue. A "News Chronicle" reporter, describing; a typical enemy onslaught yesterday in the Don bend, says .that 300 tanks in V formation attacked the Soviet defences on a narrow front. Russian artillery was brought up, and was so effective that the enemy attack was repulsed with heavy German losses. The enemy drive on Stalingrad from the south-west has temporarily slowed down. The Germans are digging in north-west of Kotelnikovo. and are erecting pill-boxes and barbed wire and laying mines. They are being given no rest by the Russians, who are counter-attacking at every opportunity.

(Rec. 11.30 a.m.) RUGBY, August 16.. The latest official news of fighting on the Caucasian, front, contained in a supplement to the midday Russian communique, says that in the region south-east of Kletskaya, in the Don bend, Soviet troops repelled numerous enemy attacks and Soviet artillery inflicted heavy losses on the enemy. In one sector of this front isfive enemy tanks penetrated the Russian positions. One Soviet gun crew destroyed three of them.

On "another sector Soviet artillery destroyed 26 lorries containing enemy infantry. In the region o£ Krasnodar, some 50 miles north-east of the Black Sea port