MOSCOW —GRIM, UNAFRAID

Manawatu Times, Volume 66, Issue 266, 8 November 1941, Page 8

MOSCOW —GRIM, UNAFRAID

Russia at War

This is the first of a series of articles In which RALPH INGERSOLL, editor of the New York newspaper P.M., reports what he has seen in Russia in the last two months. In the series he discusses the Soviet’s Army and Air Force, the accuracy of her communiques, her aircraft production, her plans for carrying on the war, and many other points of great topical interest. The articles have been made available to Herald-Tribune readers by special arrangement.

NEW YORK, October 26. I have just returned after six weeks spent in the Soviet Union. The people of Moscow love their city, which is easily the most impressive thing in the Soviet Union. It is a huge city. The first impression one gets on emerging from Moscow railway station is of enormous open spaces.

Hie big squares are as wide as a number of American blocks put together. The main avenues are so wide they could carry 20 lines of moving traffic. There was \»ery little traffic for them to carry. Trucks carrying ammunition *nd supplies comprised what little traffic there was. I was in Moscow three weeks, and eaw only four air raid*. The Russians had a policy of repairing bomb damage immediately. Repair work had often begun while the raid was still on. The new buildings in the city, and there are hundreds and hundreds of them, are six to eight storeys high, iand characteristically a half block to a block in length. Most of the new buildings are apartment houses. The people must live one family to a room. On the edge of the city it is characteristic to see factories on one side oi the broad highway, trolley tracks in the middle, and, on the opposite side, a phalanx of apartment-houses where ♦he engineers and workers live. There seemed to be no “districts” in Moscow in the American sense of a business district, amusement, and other centres. The nearest parallel to the American system is in the centre of the city, •where there is a concentration of a few hotels and theatres around the Kremlin. Stores in Gorki Street, the main shopping centre, sell the same merchandise as the stores in the suburbs. There is oply one storekeeper—the Government. The rest of the city is simply residential and industrial mixed. Traffic on the streets is quieter than 5n any other city I have visited. Traffic jams are unknown. A parked line of 20 cars is something to stop and look at. The bulk of the traffic is pedestrian, end the shuffling noise of feet on the pavement is a characteristic souno. The famed Moscow subways are spick and span, and full of marble pillars, shiny tiles, and statues of Soviet heroes. When I left, the work of sandbagging and boarding-up the city was •lmost complete. Entrances to buildings and vulnerable places were not only sandbagged to a height of 10 to 15 feet, but the sandbags were covered ■with a tight, neat boarding painted the colour of the building. Diagonal strips of fabric had been carefully pasted across all the windows to prevent bomb concussion. There are few roads besides the trunk highways, and these must be in a vury bad condition now. The trunk highway to Leningrad is no better than a 20-year-old macadam road. The Smolensk road, six traffic lanes wide, iweeping over hills and rolling valleys to the east, is the sole exception. I was in Moscow when the first personal exhortation to the citizens oi Leningrad was published in the Moscow newspaper Pravda. It called on them to defend Leningrad block by block. The Germans were then more than 100 miles away from Moscow. But 1 don’t think that anything that happened after that surprised the Russians. The first three months of the Russo-German war taught them that their strength lay in holding their armies together, repeating Intact, and taking a steady casualty toll of the Germans. The capture of Moscow by the Germans would be a terrible thing. But the threat to the south is more important. There are no protecting woods for cover in the south, nor does the winter come so soon or so violently there. X spent three weeks in Moscow talk-

ing to its soldiers and citizens, and to the head of the State.

As I write, news comes that Moscow, the city which I have just left, is under siege, that the staffs of the embassies and the journalists have gone east, and that armed citizens are fighting their enemies in the suburbs. I have been through these suburbs, and have driven 30 miles down the broad, smooth Smolensk road. The ground is gently rolling. The woods are interspersed with fields. The defences are not continuous fortifications, trenches, or barricades. They are almost an infinity ,of strong-points. Camouflaged positions are on every rise of ground and at the edge of every wood. Columns of tanks, trucks, and supplies were parked on the roads through the woods when I was there. The positions on the hills were dug into the ground and covered with netting and patches of canvas. The guns were below ground, and very hard to see. There were no troop movements when I was there. But everything seemed to be in place—ready and waiting. Groups of civilians had begun multiplying the 1 ‘ strong-point ’ * system. You saw them all over the hills, 100 here and 100 there, all digging. They were mostly women. In Moscow the men were in the equivalent of the English Home Guard. They ■were drilling in small detachments, and often sang as they marched through the streets. They didn’t carry arms then. The most distinctive military feature of Moscow was its anti-aircraft barrage, which was terrific. It extended in a belt around the Vhole city. I have seen batteries more than 30 miles from the centre of Moscow. When the German planes came over, the whole business seemed to be let |go at once. I have been through the blitz In London, and have watched antiaircraft work in China and Egypt. But I have never seen anything to compare in volume and intensity with the barrage around Moscow. j Other observers who had also been 'in England agreed with me. The Soviet Press insisted that Moscow’s barrage was holding back the German planes, but I didn’t believe this. I had seen planes flying through or I' over London’s barrage. But when, later, I compared notes with pilots and anti-aircraft gunners, they said they believed that barrages as | heavy as those I had described would (keep the bombers back. I They didn’t think the Germans could get heavy bomb loads to a height of much more than 20,000 feet, and that they were more likely to be flying at around 10,000 feet. In that case, they said, such a heavy barrage would increase casualties beyond a fair trading point. Soviet planes were almost continu,ously over Moscow. The best Soviet fighter planes are extremely well built. They are an imitation of the British Hurricane, lightly armed, but fast and very manoeuvrable. Other types of planes in the Soviet air force were far behind this model. But the Russians were using everything they had at some place or other ;on the front. Coming away, I travelled six days in trains filled with slightly wounded and men on leave. We were 90 miles behind the battle lines, but the German’s were raiding the railway as we passed through. Their bombing was not much more accurate than in England. J The Soviet soldiers were young. Even the wounded were very cocky. [There was no shortage of food, guns, or ammunition. The Russians were then outnumbered only in tanks and planes.