BATTLE OF KHARKOV

Southland Times, Issue 24759, 2 June 1942, Page 5

BATTLE OF KHARKOV

HEAVY FIGHTING (Rec. 7 p.m.) LONDON, May 31. Despite German announcements that the Battle of Kharkov is over, there is certainly another stage ahead, says the Stockholm correspondent of The Times. Heavy fighting is going on, not only towards Isyum, but nearer Kharkov, and it must inevitably again flare up as one side is able to resume the offensive. Red Star, organ of the Red Army, reports that the Russians are consolidating and fortifying 400 points captured during the Kharkov fighting. Important operations are brewing on the central front. The Germans are massing strong forces on the Smolensk-Viazma railway. Russian preparations in this sector are also well advanced. The Germans have already made several tentative local attacks. Describing the heli of Kharkov, a Swedish war correspondent says the battlefield has been turned into an immense cemetery. The bodies of men and horses are strewn about as far as the eye can see. Gunners lie dead, but still clinging to their weapons as though waiting for the signal to fire. Abandoned or burned-out tanks and. lorries are piled up in indescribable confusion. BRITISH TANKS READY FOR FRONT (8.0.W.) RUGBY, May 31. A visit to “Britanski Tankograd” (British tank town), which has grown up. behind the Russian lines is described by a news agency correspondent. This “town,” he says, is composed of row after row of British-built Matildas and Valentines with sturdy Russian tank troops manning them. The correspondent met Colonel Ivan Shapovalov, commander of a Red Army tank brigade equipped exclusively with British tanks. “The period of training,” said Colonel Shapovalov, “has ended and the real business is beginning. This is not the first Soviet brigade to be equipped with British tanks, nor will it be the last. More British-built armoured fortresses are coming along.” ; Several brigades of British and American tanks being formed in Cen- ’ tral Russia will be sent to the front soon, reports the British United Press Moscow correspondent. British-built Valentines and Matildas have already been in action on the Kharkov front and the central front with good results.