HORSE SHOE CRACKING

Evening Star, Issue 25083, 26 January 1944, Page 5

HORSE SHOE CRACKING

SOVIET PRESSURE INCREASED GERMAN ESCAPE LINE CUT (Rec. 1.30 p.m.) LONDON, Jan. 25. " The much - vaunted German horse shoe around Leningrad is cracking. Every hour brings fresh Russian successes," says the ' Red Star.' " Leningrad is seeing the first tangible proofs of the German rout. The columns of prisoners moving along the streets and the thousands of German dead littering the battlefield are but a foretaste of things to come." General Govorov's troops are preparing to wipe out Krasnogvardeisk and Tosno, the last German strongholds in the horse shoe-shaped Todt Line, which once held Leningrad imprisoned, says Reuter's Moscow correspondent. The Germans at Krasnogvardeisk, with their escape line to Narva cut, are isolated. The Red army, after crossing the' railway, stands north-west and south of Krasnogvardeisk. The, semi-circle of the Russian forces is menacing Tosno, and the railway between Tosno and Krasnogvardeisk is already under fire from Red army units which during the last night advanced southward. The Russians hold a dozen miles of the Narva railway west of Krasnogvardeisk and have established firm hedgehog positions south of it. The bulk of the network of railways concentrated in a 20-mile radius of Leningrad is back in Russian hands, and armoured trains are bringing up troops from Leningrad almost to the front line. Thaws have softened the roads in the Leningrad battle area, but; further south large numbers of ski troops are being used in the drive from Novgorod to Shiinskaya.