RUSSIAN WAR

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 76, 5 August 1941, Page 3

RUSSIAN WAR

SOVIET NOVELIST S IMPRESSIONS CI.KMANS DISLIKE 11.\ VON L • Am eve wilnc: account "i two week's warfare on the Russ.. German front was; given me to day by Pan! Nilin. 32-year old novelist who was recently given a Stalin award of 100.0(10 rouble for the scenario of the Sox id-made film “The Great Life.” cables Krskino Caldwell, ; special correpondcnt. of the "Daily Ex j press.” from Moscow, i i Nilin went to the front as a w l iter Observer on the day after war began. “One of the biggest engagements 1 ' saw lasted continuously for three nights and four days.” he said. "The Germans isent a largo force across a river. They j were met by a smaller force of the Red j Army and the battle ranged over an area of about two square mill's. I “Our soldiers fought all this tim • * 'without food supplies, and I presume ! the Germans did the same. At the end of the fourth day fresh Red Army troops came up. That was the end of; the engagement. The Germans -what ! wore left of them —retreated." PLANES. TANKS AND INFANTRY Nilin saw air battles, tank battles; and infantry engagements during his ; stay in his unnamed sector. In one | tank battle both sides used their! biggest tanks, and Nilin declared that I the Soviet tanks were obviously | stronger, because they were able to race headlong into the German tanks and upset them. “During infantry engagements." he went on. "the Germans always did a: lot of shouting at each other, generally calling for help or yelling instrue- 1 fions. The Soviet troops fought in determined silence. “The Germans have evidently bees convinced by propaganda that thc> . cannot be beaten, because, when they do lose, they break down like babies." Nilin said that when German planes i were brought down, peasants rushed ' up, surrounded the plane and airmen, land guarded them with a\es and pitch- , forks. The German crews were more j afraid of being hacked lo piece.- by angry peasants than they wen* of being' captured. Several airmen he talked to had made bombing raids on England. | Two who wore the Iron Cross had maps : of England painted on the fuselages' I of the planes. HURRIED TO TIIE lASI Some prisoners told Nilin that they! j were in France a few days before the! , war with the U.S.S.R. started, and j that, without being told where they were being taken, they were put on! [trains and brought to the Soviet! border, where they began fighting be- i 'fore they had a chance to find out what it was all about, j According to Nilin, many of the Ger i roan bombing t lane contained three i Germans and one Czech—the Czech wa - ! always the rear gunner. Captured Czechs invariably said they had been; I forced by the Germans to become rear- \ I gunners because that was the most dan- ! i gerous seat in the plane. ! The German infantry, he said, were i afraid of bayonet attacks. Thev don’t! rnind fighting with machine-guns or other lire weapons, but they beam yelhny. shouting and surrendering be j the hundreds when the Red Armv ! launches a bayonet attack. 1 -The Germans alwav. give them- 1 selves up by shouting. 'Genosse, genos.se. genosse'—the Nazi parly's I own word for ’comrade.’ ”