RED ARMY’S RETREAT

Grey River Argus, 5 January 1940, Page 7

RED ARMY’S RETREAT

Ghastly Spectacle COUNTLESS DEAD LEFT IN SNOW (Received January 4, 5.5 p.m.) LONDON, January 3. “Conditions on the Soviet rorces’ lines of retreat, are becoming chaodc, wniie the ruin ot the overthrown Rea Armies offers a ghastly spectacle," says the “Daily Telegraph’s” correspondent at the front. Dealing with we aftermath of the Battle ot Tolvajarvi, the correspun’aent says, "Countless Russian ueau are lying as they fell, beneath new fallen snow. Shattered tanks and worries, and also heaps of d-ons are to be found ail along the main artery of the battlefield leading to Lakel Aigajarvi. There the hillside and 1 forests were tun of the snow-covered corpses of men who were wip-d out oy tne Finnish machaie-guns. AU of the corpses bore gas masks. “There must have been many Finnish dead, but the bodies, of these! nave already been removed tor burial.’

The correspondent of the Associated Press of Britain at Kiantajarvi says: “All that remains of the 17,000 men who comprised the Red Army Division who wero trapped at Kiantajarvi are 2,000, and these now are wanderers in forests and in snowdrifts, where the Finns, mounted on skis, relentlessly purue temh. Those who Were made captives declared that they were never told against whom they were,.going ,to fight. The men of the ill-fated- division were mostly collective farmers, with only, a brief military training. They seem to be bewildered by their fate. “More Russian reinforcements, to repair the ravages of the battle, are now arriving from Siberia. The Faris wireless states That, the Russian reinforcements from, Siberia will .reacn their destinations in a'decimated condition. Many of them have already been shot for insubordination.

SALVATIONIST VICTIMS. LONDON, January 3. The Salvation Army announced that one woman Salvationist was killed and three seriously injured, when the Russians bombed a slum post at Wasa. Soviet and Bulgaria TRADE TALKS MOSCOW, January 3. The Russo-Bulgarian trade talks have been begun in a cordial atmosphere.