LINES PIERCED

Manawatu Standard, Volume LXII, Issue 256, 28 September 1942, Page 5

LINES PIERCED

SETBACK TO GERMANS TIMOSHENKtVS" OFFENSIVE. (N.Z. Press Association —Copyright.) LONDON, Sept. 27. Marshal Timoshenko's forces at Stalingrad are fighting against time because while the defenders are holding out the relieving Russian army from the north is driving towards the city. The German High Command admitted that the relieving force had pierced tho German main positions on the hills northward of Stalingrad. The Red Star declares: "The German forces at Stalingrad are wearing out. It is possible for us to hold them." , "There are signs that the Germans are getting near the point of exhaustion," says Reuter's Moscow correspondent. The German screen between the Russian defenders and the relieving army has become thinner and tho next few days, even the next 24 hours, may turn the balance either way. The fighting is so entangled in some Stalingrad districts that the Germans have been forced to give up bombing for fear of slaughtering their own troops. German tanks at first took advantage of Stalingrad's broad boulevards for massed onslaughts, but the Russians destroyed 20 to 30 tanks daily, forcing the enemy to modify his methods. The Volga's "little navy" of gunboats nightly escorts supplies across tho river, while the Volga flotilla called "floating tanks," which has been reinforced with larger guns, maintains a ceaseless supporting barrage against the German lines. A Russian communique says that north-west of the city, where the Russians have for some days been striking at tho German left flank, several enemy counter-attacks have been repelled with heavy loss and the capturo of booty. . . New armoured forces have joined in the battle, according to a Moscow Press message. High speed motor-boats are coursing along the Volda engaging German tanks and artillery at short range. These river tanks are also employed to protect the crossings against the Luftwaffe and against trench-mortars trying to cripple Soviet transport, supplies, and reinforcements and the evacuation of wounded. The Volga is bristling with guns pointing to the skies and to the land, with heavy Kuns on monitors reinforcing tho Russian long-range artillery. SUCCESS NEAR VORONEZH.

The Moscow radio records a success on the front north of Voronezh, where on one sector, the Russians pushed forward and penetrated a forest. At many points on the Voronezh front, including the western bank of the Don, south of the city, the Germans arc constantly but unsuccessfully counter-attacking. A French fighter squadron has left for the Russian front following a series of military and diplomatic talks between representatives of the French National Committee and the Soviet. The unit, which it is hoped will soon be in operation, will bo christened the "Normandy" squadron. It will fight under the operational command of the Russian Air Sediig Pasha, Turkish delegate to the Montreux Conference, in an article in the Istanbul newspaper Aksam, said according to the Montreux Treaty any fleet deprived of all its ports has the right to cross the Dardanelles. Therefore if the Germans occupy all the Black Sea ports the Russian Black Sea fleet would have the right to proceed to Kronstadt or Vladivostock. A Russian submarine attacked a Rumanian convoy in the Black Sea and sank the destroyer Marasesti.