THREE OFFENSIVES

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 16, 20 January 1944, Page 5

THREE OFFENSIVES

i DEVELOPMENTS IN NORTH LONDON, January 18. Front-line messages show that the fiercest fighting in the new northern offensives is in the area south of Oranienbaum, about 20 miles west of Leningrad. The Russians have always held this beachhead, covered by the great naval base on the island of Kronstadt, and now naval guns are bombarding the enemy, and sailors and marines of the Baltic Fleet are fighting side by side with the Red Army men, while bombers under low cloud pounded the German positions. The German fortifications on this front are described as the deepest and strongest ever built on any part of the Russian front. At many points the Russians had to fight their way through 10 lines of barbed-wire entanglements with trenches in between before reaching the Germans' main strong-points. The whole of the Soviet Union is cheering the Leningrad offensive. It opened a year today, after the breaking of the German blockade, and the Russian people have awaited the present moment ever since the first mild frost of this freak Russian winter, Now, apparently, the ground is hard enough for the' tanks, mobile guns, and great masses of supplies to move. The Red Army's next aim will probably be to free the German-held network of railways round Leningrad. The other new offensive on the northern front has wider implications. The Germans say their line has been breached about 12 miles north of the ancient fortress city of Novgorod. It is clear that the Russians are driving to cut the enemy's communications with the Leningrad front. The third northern offensive, which started a week ago north of Novo Sokolniki, is developing well. Moscow correspondents state that Generals Vatutin, Koniev, and Rokossovsky, on the. Ukrainian and White Russian fronts, are overcoming enormous difficulties in supplying their armies before correlating their offensives. Red Army sappers are laying planks