TITANIC CLASHES

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21066, 10 April 1943, Page 3

TITANIC CLASHES

PLANS IN RUSSIA BOTH SIDES PREPARE BATTLE FOR BRIDGEHEADS (By Telegraph—Press Assn—Copyright.) (Noon.) .LONDON, April 9. With both sides feverishly gathering their resources for titantic spring clashes, only guarded news is at present seeping out of Russia. Moscow correspondents for several days have uniformly kept to the same subject—the struggle for the Donetz bridgeheads, the German resistance to encirclement in the Kuban, and the accumulation of reserves on both sides. Confirming tho Russian admission (hat the Germans yesterday south of BaJakleya advanced but were driven back ip’a counter-attack, Moscow correspondents state that Balakleya was tho scene of very fierce lighting yesterday, when the Russians, by smashing back the Germans, succeeded in enlarging their bridgehead. _ The Germans did not attempt a further blow because of the heavy cost of this failure. Tho Times’ Stockholm correspondent says that the Russians for a fortnight held the complete course of tho Donetz. They at present hold tho entire left bank and also . the right bank from the confluence of the Donetz with the Don to above Liman, but the Germans regained stretches on the right bank between tho Liman and Uyelgorod areas. The Iz.yum bridgehead has been defying all’ the efforts of the Germans, who fear to leave a single square mile in Russian hands. The Germans have been throwing in all their weapons, including the powerful close support of guns mounted on 22-ton (auks, but the Russians have defended successfully. Tho other scene of activity is the Kuban bridgehead. Russian pressure continues both on the Lower Kuban end in the monuntains behind Novorossisk. London observers, summing up the results of a year of warfare on the eastern front, estimate that the Russians are in stronger defensive posilions than last spring. They have wiped out nearly all the German gains of 1942 and bitten into the enemy’s fortified network in several important areas. From the German point of view, tho past year may be written down as almost completely wasted effort with a very heavy bill of costs.