SCORCHED EARTH

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 51, Issue 3185, 21 October 1942, Page 3

SCORCHED EARTH

NOTHING FOR GERMANS KUBAN COSSACKS’ ACTION

TYPICALLY RUSSIAN TACTICS

From a Russian correspondent of London Times last week came this typically-Russian account of scorched-earth tactics in the Cossack country. It is a sultry, stifling day.

A burning haze hovers over the dusty street of the stanitsa (Cossack village) of Starominskaya. Usually deserted at this hour, Starominskaya is filled with unaccustomed activity. Windows, doors and gates of all the cottages are flung wide open, and in edch courtyard stands a waggon to which a pair of sturdy horses is harnessed.

Villagers take only the most essential belongings; the rest will be buried, under cover of darkness, where the invaders will never discover it. The cattle, were driven away several days ago.

All that is left is the poultry, which the children are chasing in the courtyards, while their mother, tears streaming down her cheeks, cuts the throats of cock and hens, bitterly cursing the cause of it all. As the column leaves, the glare of burning villages and gunfire flashes illuminate the night sky.

With the baggage go the old men and women, mothers and small children, the sick and crippled. The ablebodied will.remain behind and fight side by side with the Red Army troops. An old Cossack took up his axe and called his 13-year-old grandson from a neighbouring house: “Come here, grandson, and let us cut down the orchard and smash the beehives.” Apple, pear and apricot trees, laden with still unripe fruit, fell one after another. “File it up in the street,” the old man said. “Let anybody who wants take it, and what is left the armoured tractors will crush to pulp when they come by.” To-night Red troops poured through en route to the front. The old man and all other 'Cossack cottagers retired, planning how nothing must be left for the enemy except a scorched waste.

Such is the decision of the Kuban Cossacks, the glorious descendants of the Cossacks of Zaporozhye Sech, who also had burned and destroyed every-

thing. Later in the quiet village the sound of plane engines- presaged parachutists. The Cossacks dashed out from their huts, hastily arming themselves with shotguns, sabres, axes and even fire-tong-s, and ran toward an assembly point.

Scattering among the yards and orchards, concealing themselves behind fences and in ditches, z they spied out the position of” the enemy force and fell on it. A report was sent to the commander of the nearest Red Army unit. “Kill whenever you can and anywhere you can,” he ordered through quick-footed youngsters. The Cossacks began A German coming to a well for a drink was -shot.

Another got a brick on his skull when he went into an orchard without a helmet. •

j “Mommo, Mommo, there are two i Germans' in our pig sty; they are j breaking down the wall looking on to I the street,” cried a 13-year-old boy I to his mother.

The' Cossack woman’s husband had been killed at Rostov.

She cautiously drew from the floor an old scimitar wrapped in rags, drew it from its scabbard, tried its edge, and resolutely made for the door.

Creeping toward the pig sty, she stood crouching by the door awaiting a signal from her son. The boy squeaked softly like a mouse.

The Cossack woman daShed into the pig sty. The curved scimitar swung twice in the air and the Germans dropped without a sound into the still, liquid manure. She had -scarcely wiped the blood from- the scimitar when the figure of a German sergeant rose before her.

There was a short burst from an automatic rifle and the young woman fell silently, like a flowering appletree cut to the roots. With a cry of intolerable hatred, the boy hurled a stone with all his might at the German’s ruddy face. <

It struck the German in the eye, depriving him of sight, and it was some time before he dispatched the boy as he lay weeping over the body of his mother.

When the Red Army regular troops reached the. stanitsa, only about a score of German parachute men still Survived. Villagers had annihilated the rest.’’ '