BEARING FRUIT

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIV, Issue 83, 5 October 1942, Page 3

BEARING FRUIT

SOVIET GRINDING DOWN POLICY

LESS NAZI PROGRESS

(Rec. 2.20 p.m.) LONDON, Oct. 4. The situation at Stalingrad remains as tense as ever, but two reports during the weekend suggest that the Russians' "grinding down" plan is beginning to bear fruit.

The flow of Axis reinforcements has not diminished, but their quality is beginning to fall off. Prisoners taken in the past few days in the street fighting, which is highly specialised warfare requiring sound training, include sappers acting as shock troops. The Russians also report - that the enemy made a disorderly retreat in another sector, and that several hundred tamely surrendered. There is no disposition to over-empha-sise "These straws in the wind," but they coincide with a weekend in which the Axis armies have made the least progress since the battle for Stalingrad began. The Moscow correspondent of "The Times" says that neither side dares to ease the pressure. A collapse in any single sector would imperil the whole Russian position, while the slightest German faltering would unleash the Russians, who are infused with the fighting- spirit and eager to press forward from their narrow confines. RUSSIANS REGAIN LOST GROUND,

In smashing a Rumanian regiment south of Stalingrad, the Russians advanced, on a wide front and regained ground which they lost on Friday. They crushed several counter-attacks and destroyed many dozens of tanks. The Germans are bitterly contesting every foot of ground north-west of Stalingrad, where the Russians in 24 hours advanced 200 yards in one sector, taking the first line of German trenches oniy after many days of fierce hammering in which they killed 1000 Germans and destroyed 25 tanks.

Foiled in their attempts to drive along the Black Sea coast south of Novorossisk, the Germans are attempting to strike towards the Black Sea from the Kuban Basin, thus cutting off the Russians south of ' Novorossisk. Major engagements are occurring at the southern edge of the Kuban Basin in the wooded Caucasian foothills. German arson crews are attempting to smoke out the Russians by setting fire to the forests, and dense clouds of smoke are drifting over the combatants. The Luftwaffe is making as many as 300 sorties daily, mostly against the Russian artillery, which is again the backbone of the defence. The forests and the hilly terrain force the German tanks to keep to the roads, where they frequently become sitting shots for the Russian guns. A German communique claims that the Germans south of the Terek River captured the strongly-fortified towns of Elchotovo and Verchni.