NOTES ON THE WAR

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVI, Issue 87, 9 October 1943, Page 6

NOTES ON THE WAR

CAPTURE OF NEVEL

RED ARMY RESUMES

Excellent news from Russia breaks the rather dull period of the last few days, when things looked like a" standstill for a time. The Red Army has resumed its offensive and captured Nevel, a key point in the German defence system north of Vitebsk. In some respects the capture of Nevel is "the most important Russian gain of the entire summer campaign, with its long roll of victory and reconquest. Nevel itself is only a small place, but it stands on the vital northsouth railway, which, from Leningrad to the western Ukraine, gave lateral communication to the enemy's front to which it runs parallel. This is the first time this railway has been reached and cut, though since the winter offensive the Red Army has been fairly close to it at Velikie Luki. It looked, then, six months or so ago, as if the Russians might breach the German line at Novo Sokolniki, a few miles to the north of Nevel and just east of Velikie' Luki, but the Germans managed to hold* out. Nevel is at the junction of the north-south railway with- a line that runs diagonally through Nevel, connecting Polotsk, a point further west on the Dvina River, with Likhoslavl on the LeningradMoscow main line, just beyond Kalinin. Effect on Front. With Nevel back in Russian hands the whole German line is imperilled j northward to the outskirts of Leningrad and southward to Vitebsk (alsoi on the Dvina), Orsha, Mogilev, and Gomel, all except Gomel on the northsouth railway. The Germans would have to fall back on Polotsk, Borisov, Minsk, and the Pripet Marshes, and a line of railway connecting Polotsk! with Pskov at the southern ■ end ofi Lake Peipus. It all depends on the capacity of the Red Army to exploit the situation. The autumn rains can? not be ignored. The whole country between the Pripet Marshes in the south and the Gulf of Finland, near Leningrad, in the north, is studded with lakes, large and small, and veined with watercourses, mostly flowing north and south into the Dvina or Lakes Ilmen and Peipus. Consequently, at this time of the year, a wet season, progress will be difficult. The Germans have the advantage of a better railway network, and it has never yet been clearly stated whether they converted the Russian five-foot gauge railways behind their lines into standard 4ft B§in for the use of their own and other European rolling stock. If they did, then the Russians will have the job of setting one rail out to | their own gauge again. i But Nevel is not the only place. The Russians have established bridgeheads across the Dnieper, first between the ] Dnieper and the Pripet north of Kiev, also opposite Pereiaslavl, south of the Ukrainian capital, and further south again opposite Kremenchug. There is also mention of a break-through on the Volkhov, south of Leningrad, and at the other extremity of the front a | clearing of the Taman Peninsula, opposite the Crimea. The importance of all this news is that it implies that the Germans have not been able to establish a stable front on the Dnieper, where it was generally understood—with support from Captain..Sertorius and General Dietmar of Berlin—that they intended to make a stand. The Dnieper line is marked on the maps accordingly as the impregnable eastern wall of Hitler's European "redoubt"—not fortress, for that has gone long* ago in Russia. ! Position in Italy. The position in Italy is also fairly clear. When the Eighth Army, working up from Foggia, effected a junction with the amphibious force landed at Termoli on the Adriatic, nearly fifty miles to the north, Kesselring,. the German commander in southern Italy, became thoroughly alarmed. Termoli is on the Adriatic coast railway from the north to Brindisi, and a few miles south is Campomarino, the junction of an important branch line running through the Apennines to Benevento and thence to the west coast at Caserta, junction for Naples. On the retention of Termoli would depend German supplies from the north via the Adriatic railway. Hence Kesselring detached a panzer division from the west to expel the Eighth Army from Termoli and hence the heavy fighting reported along the Biferno River, which enters the Adriatic at Campomarino. River and railway are close together here with the railway north of the riyer. A few miles inland the railway crosses the river and runs parallel to it, roughly, through Campobasso, where it begins to wind its way through- the main range to Benevento. The report that the Allies had breached the Volturno line was not strictly * true. Benevento is not on the Volturno proper, but on a main tributary, the Calore, which joins the Volturno about 16 miles above Capua. The Volturno rises much further to the north in the heart of the Apennines not far from the source of the Biferno, already mentioned. At Termoli the Allies are in the Italian province of Abruzzi c Molise, containing the bleakest and most rugged region of the Apennines. Fifty miles to the north of Termoli lies Pescara; also on the Adriatic, connected by highway and railway through Sulmona and Avezzano with Rome. It is the threat to this line that seems to have disturbed the Germans.

The fall of Capua to the Fifth Army, announced today, does not mean the Volturno line has been breached. Capua is south of the river, but it is jjn important gain. The weather is bad all along the line.