SOVIET RETREAT

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20137, 5 January 1940, Page 7

SOVIET RETREAT

CHAOTIC CONDITIONS GHASTLY SPECTACLE DEAD BENEATH SNOW TRAPPED DIVISION (Reed. Jan. 5, 9 a.m.) LONDON. Jan. 3. “Conditions in the Soviet lines of retreat are becoming chaotic, while the ruin of the overthrown armies offers a ghastly spectacle,” says the correspondent of the Daily Telegraph at the front in Finland. Dealing with the aftermath of the battle of Tolvajarvi, he says: “Countless Russian dead are lying as they fell beneath new-fallen snow. Shattered tanks, lorries and heaps of debris are found all along the battlefields. “On the main artery leading to Lake Algajarvi, there are hillside forests full of snow-covered corpses wiped oul by machine-guns. All bore gas-masks There must have been many Finnish dead, but these had already been removed for burial.” The correspondent of the Associated Press of Great Britain at Kiantajarvi says: “All that remains of 17,000 men comprising the Russian division, which was trapped at Kiantajarvi, are 2000 wanderers in the forests and snow drifts, where the Finns, mounted on skis, relentlessly pursue them. “Captives declared that they had never been told against whom they were going to fight They are mostly collective farmers with brief military training and seem to be bewildered by their fate.” Russian reinforcements to repair the ravages of the battle are arriving from Siberia, but a Paris wireless broadcast states that they will reach their destinations because many have been shot for insubordination.