DESOLATE AREAS

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20631, 12 August 1941, Page 6

DESOLATE AREAS

SMOLENSK RUINS BLACKENED VILLAGES PATH OF NAZI PUSH (Elec. Tel. Copyright—United Press Assn.) (Reed. Aug. 12. 2 p.m.) LONDON, Aug. 11. “Smolensk is now among the towns Wiped out by war,” says M. Alvin Steinkopf, a special correspondent of the Associated Press of Great Britain with the German forces, in a despatch from Smolensk by way of Berlin. “The front has moved a few kilometres in the direction of Moscow and I can hear the rumble of guns. 1 walked over the ashes of Smolensk and watched a ceaseless stream of German lorries roll past burnt-out factories and homes. “A German officer when asked how much of Smolensk was destroyed estimated it at about 90 per cent. He insisted in the next breath that most ot the damage was due to the Russians carrying out the scorched earth orders. “When asked where were Smolensk civilians, the officer replied tha, 160,000 were there last month. Now there were about 20,000 who lived among the ruins. Gangs Cleaning Up “Over the whole scene swarm German soldiers and working gangs cleaning up at a terrific rate. “Hundreds of miles of travel in this zone, much of which was in a German military transport plane, revealec that M. Stalin’s appeal for a scorchec earth was only partly successful Minsk and Vitebsk appeared desolated almost to the same extent as Smolensk, but in between there were hundreds of straw-thatched villages, mostly untouched. •' Here and there lay the blackened ruins of a village. “Between these rural communities stretched rye and wheat fields, now gleaming golden in the sun. These fields were not destroyed, because the grain was too green to burn when the Russians withdrew from Smolensk. Much of the grain has now been harvested. Some of the people seemed to be working in the fields. “There may be grain enough to feed most of the rural population, but what will the thousands of town dwellers do when the bitter Russian winter descends on their roofless and wall-less homes? None can tell.”