Heavy Fighting in Vitebsk Area

Manawatu Times, Volume 69, Issue 6, 8 January 1944, Page 5

Heavy Fighting in Vitebsk Area

Germans Claim “Defensive Success” in Tank Battle

(By Telegraph—Press Assn.—Copyright.)

Received Saturday, 1 a.m.

LONDON, Jan. 7,

A new Russian offensive at the northern end of the Dnieper Bend is reported over Axis-controlled radio stations. According to the Vichy radio the new Russian offensive expected in the Cherkassy region has been unleashed in the Kirovgrad and Krivoi-rog sectors, obviously aimed at forcing the Germans to evacuate the great Dnieper Bend. The radio broadcast a late dispatch from Berlin claiming that the greatest tank battle of the war had just concluded north of Krivoi-rog with a defensive German success.

Heavy fighting is going on in the Vitebsk area in addition to the entire Dnieper Bend. The centre of gravity of fighting is the area west of Jitomir. Pravda says the most important result of Vatutin’s Kiev offensive has been the rout of the crack German tank divisions including the Hermann Goering and Das Reich Divisions. This is particularly significant as, these divisions admitted only real Germans — genuine Nazis trained in murder and taught to hold out in the darkest hour. Their losses have been so huge that only six or eight men remained in some companies. The frontline correspondent in a dispactch to Isvestia says: “I have not seen a single position, road, trench or foot of soil in the path of our troops advancing beyond Jitomir and Berdichev that does not bear traces of our shells. The voice of war can be heard everywhere as the ever-growing columns of Russian guns and infantry march down the roads.”

Vatutin’s column is pressing on rapidly from Eerdichev over a broad front against the old Polish border, says the British United Press’s correspondent. This column has captured Novomiropol, halfway between Berdichev and Shepetovka and by the capture of Zozov is now only 23 miles east-north-east of Vinnitsa. Other places captured by the Russians include the rail station of Lipovets, 23 miles east of Vinnitsa and 12 miles from the G-erman escape railway leading from the Dnieper Bend and Odessa tc Poland. Agencies also specify the capture of Covno on the railway from Berdichev to Brestlitovk.

A Russian communique reports the capture of Shashkov, 35 miles due south of Byelaya Tserkov; Chodorkov, 28 miles southwest of Jitomir, and Gorodnitsa, which is the terminus of -he railway line on the old Polish frontier 20 miles northwest ol N o vograd-V olynsk.