DESOLATE SCENE

Gisborne Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 21633, 9 February 1945, Page 3

DESOLATE SCENE

EASTERN BERLIN VAST EXODUS WEST RED BOMBERS’ ASSAULT LONDON, Feb. 7. Russian airmen after reconnaissance flights over Berlin to-day reported that the eastern part of the capital appeared to be deserted. Smoke was coming from factory chimneys only in the western half of the city. Reuter’s correspondent in Moscow says the airmen described the eastern part of Berlin as* a picture of desolation. They saw in contrast the southwestern side of the city where all the roads were jammed with cars, carts and pedestrians. The traffic moved in three lanes. There were traffic jams at a number of points. The correspondent adds that the Red Air Force has already fought its first dogfights over Berlin. Stormovik dive-bombers are operating in large numbers from Marshal Zhukov’s Berlin front, as many as 200 in a single flight heading,for Berlin. Germany is fast becoming a nation of migrants, says the Evening News correspondent in Zurich. Hundreds of thousands of Germans are abandoning possessions which they cannot carry and are flocking into the interior of the Reich in search of safety. One of the seemingly endless columns comes from the East, heading for Berlin, is reported to be nearly 20 miles long. Other columns streaming towards the capital from the south are making for regions which are already swamped with earlier evacuees from the Rhineland, Saar and Ruhr.