GRIM SIGHTS AT SMOLENSK

Southland Times, Issue 24548, 24 September 1941, Page 5

GRIM SIGHTS AT SMOLENSK

“A VAST GERMAN GRAVEYARD” FIRSTHAND STORIES (Rec. 11.15 p.m.) NEW YORK, September 22. A first-hand story of the Smolensk battlefield, which is described as a vast German graveyard, is published by The New York Times from its Moscow correspondent, Carl Sulzberger, who motored for seven days over this tank-churned death valley, where hundreds of thousands of men perished in an effort to bar the road to Moscow. “There is at present no major battle going on,” says Mr Sulzberger, “but there is intensive activity with field guns and supplies drawn by tractors and horses as the mud prevents the use of swift transport. The Russians are bringing up padded winter uniforms and throwing branches and sods into the slimy roads. The fields are chewed by tractors and tanks and pitted with shell-holes and bomb craters 18 feet deep and occasionally 30 feet wide. One’s feet sink into covered bomb craters which entomb uncounted Germans and there are pieces of Messerschmitts sticking out of the earth as far as the eye can see. Between smashed and torn villages the landscape is littered with remnants of tanks, punctured helmets, sodden uniforms and soggy bones. STRONG RUSSIAN DEFENCES “With winter developing all the roads are bogged down and the Russians have organized strong and deep defences. It is unlikely that Hitler will ever reach Moscow by this route.” A London message states that giving his impressions of a six days’ tour of the Smolensk zone The Daily Telegraph’s correspondent, A. T. Cholerton, says: . “Everywhere I went I was received with real Russian kindness and even enthusiasm, but always there was an undertone of anxiety as to what active help Britain could give immediately. When I told them that the Royal Air

Force was already in action on the Russian front and that stores and equipment of every kind were arriving in ever-increasing quantities their response was always moving. “Marshal Timoshenko’s men had inflicted very heavy losses on the enemy in 38 days’ fighting. Their morale is still high. Marshal Timoshenko paid .a tribute to the heroic qualities of his men. He repeatedly emphasized the magnitude of the task and the need for assistance.”