THE CLOSING SCENES

Evening Star, Issue 25171, 10 May 1944, Page 3

THE CLOSING SCENES

BITTER AND BLOODY FIGHT MANNSTEIN'S ASSAULT OF 1942 AVENGED »<Rec. 1 p.m.) LONDON, May W. Reuter's Moscow correspondent, In a despatch written before the announcement of the fall of Sebastopol, said that in bitter and bloody fighting picked groups or Red army stormtroops were punching their way through the outskirts of the smoke-hung city which was crackling with the crash of bombs and unremitting gunfire from the ■Russian artillery. "Red air force planes are ceaselessly flying over the battle area," he wrote.

" The Germans face an earth-rending concentration of guns and planes and cannot avert the inevitable end. " The Russians to-day stormed forward in the half light of dawn and went into battle cheering and wearing medals because this was the final battle for ' the heroes' city ' and the revenge for 1942." Russian gunners, manhandling their guns over the shellchurned earth, were firing pointblanb against German knots of resistance. Russian snipers were keeping up constant harassing fire against the Germans crawling tjp with supplies, and were picking off German officers attempting to rally their troops.

German dead lay thick around paaitions where there was heavy bloodshed in Field-Marshal von Mannstein's storming of the city in 1942.

A German News Agency's military commentator, before its fall, said that Sebastopol had lost much of its strategic value since the front had shifted back from the Dniester Estuary.