KHARKOV BATTLE

Greymouth Evening Star, 23 May 1942, Page 5

KHARKOV BATTLE

RUSSIAN GRIP TIGHTENED STRONGHOLD CAPTURED LONDON, May 22. Marshal Timoshenko appeal’s to oe tightening his grip on the approaches to Kharkov, although German resistance is still vigorous everywhere. The latest Soviet communique says offensive operations are continuing. The Russians advanced six miles in one sector on the Kharkov front yesterday, and captured one of Marshal von Bock’s strongholds. A Moscow communique says that the point was one that the enemy had to hold at all costs. The Soviet offensive has now developed two tentacles, one from the north in the direction of Byelgorod, and the other from the south in the direction of Lozovaya. There are no details of the fighting round Kerch, but agency reports say that the Russians are receiving constant help from the defenders of Sebastopol, who make frequent raids on the Germans. . , Reports from all sources, including Berlin, tend to confirm that Russian weight is telling in the Kharkov battle. The Soviet Army newspaper, “Red Star,” says that the Russians have penetrated the main defences of Kharkov, and fighting is now raging in the lightly fortified towns and villages of the rolling Ukraine countryside. In several sectors of the mam defence zone the Germans are clinging to fortified centres, but these “hedgehogs” have been encircled and are being mopped up. . The Germans have thrown in all their spring offensive concentrations in an attempt to stem the Red Army s advance. Because ol their losses the Germans have abandoned mass tank assaults and have resorted to the use of infantry, supported by small tank and aircraft forces. The Moscow radio says that a swift thrust from Lozovaya placed Marshal Timoshenko astride the railway between Kharkov, the Caucasus, and the Crimea.

TIMOSHENKO’S TIMELY BLOW

LONDON, May 21

Reports from all sources, including Berlin, tend to confirm the view that Russian weight is telling in the battle of Kharkov. The Moscow correspondent ol the “Daily Express” says: The battle of Kharkov is like a great Catherine wheel of death roaring round the Ukraine. The blue sky is blackened with a paU of smoke rising from villages set on fire by German forces when retreating westward. Just a year ago, this was the richest land in the whole Soviet territory. Today nothing lives in it without armour, and no man without a gun has a chance of living. Thank God, the Russians struck first. The Red Army has had a four-clay start. With this Hitler will never be able to catch up. It was not until four days after Marshal Timoshenko struck that General von Bock was able to collect himself and then begin any real counter-blows. Now the battle had reached a wicked pace. The Red Army has taken its slogan from a great Russian military strategist of the past, General Suvrov, who declared for speed and thrust. Marshal Timoshenko gives that order today. The Paris radio says: Russians, for the first time, are using seventy-ton tanks on the Kharkov front. “The Times’s” Stockholm correspondent says: “A most dangerous time for the Russians was on Monday last, when General von Bock unleashed an armoured counter-attack from the Donets Basin against Marshal Timoshenko’s left flank. It is now clear that Marshal Timoshenko expected this attack, and that shock absorbers which ho arrayed in the Isyum area have proved most effective. The first German tank wedge encountered camouflaged pits and massed artillery, and reeled back with its strength halved. Russian tanks then went into action. Subsequent German armoured thrusts were beaten back. GERMAN TACTICS FOILED. ”RUGBY, May 22. A description of the Kharkov fighting is given in a front line dispatch to “Izvestia,” which states: On warm, windless, sunny days, dust rises thickly above the Ukranian steppe, and the smoke ol unceasing cannonade blankets the horizon. The thunder of cannons and the maddening rattle of machine-guns and tommy guns, rolling across the fields, is magnified one hundredfold byecho. A German scouting plane appears, searching for a crossing made by our sappers. Anti-aircraft guns roar and the aerial bandit turns back. From an unseen aerodrome, two Soviet fighters had already risen to meet the scouting plane in combat. The sound of machine-guns firing in the skies reached the earth.

The big several-clay tank battle is drawing to a close with the Germans weakening in resistance, owing to the enormous losses inflicted by Soviet infantry and artillery, whose initial successes were followed up by whirling charges of heavy and medium Soviet tanks, which crushed the enemy armoured and artillery fortifications. The Germans have resumed frequent tank attacks 'on various sectors, but not on a large scale. To avoid losses, they are trying to foil the Russians by small, sham attacks in one or more directions, simultaneously sending a larger group of tanks in the endeavour to break through at another place, in order to hit at the flanks or rear of the advancing Soviet forces. However, General Timoshenko’s troops are manoeuvring with skill and mobility, and paralysing all such efforts. UKRAINE'S LIBERATION.

(Rec. 10 a.m.) LONDON. May 22. A Russian communique on last night’s fighting merely says: The Kharkov offensive continues, likewise the fighting in the eastern part of the Kerch Peninsula, with nothing of importance on other fronts. The Berlin radio says that after assembling 47 battalions in the Murmansk area, the Russians made 129 attacks on German positions, and succeeded in gaining some ground on the Arctic coast.

A Kuibyshev message says: The weather now permits large-scale operations as far north as Leningrad. There has been much German air reconnaissance in the sectors between Novgorod and Velikiyeluki, and the Germans are determinedly testing the Russian strength in fierce local encounters in the Rjev-Viazma bulge (which appears to be what the Russians call the Kalinin front). An offensive spirit inspires the Red Army from the High Command downwards.

Press commentators see the liberation of the whole Ukraine as the ob - jective of the Kharkov drive. The High Command's strategy basically relies on bleeding the German Army to death, for which all opportunities of offensive and defensive fighting are welcome to the Russians. POLISH TROOPS LONDON, May 21. Polish troops who formerly were stationed in Scotland, have arrived in Russia. They had been in Britain since the fall of France. They are highly-trained soldiers and are joining the Polish Army in Russia. This is the first force to go from Britain to Russia, except an R.A.F. wing (who have returned) who were under the New Zealander. Wing Commander Isherwood, 'while ordinary technicians also went.