NO MAJOR CHANGE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 November 1941, Page 5

NO MAJOR CHANGE

ON ANY PART OF EASTERN FRONT Winter Extends to the Crimea HARD FIGHTING SOUTH OF LENINGRAD AGAINST ENEMY ENCIRCLEMENT ATTEMPT LONDON, November 16. In Russia, winter has now spread to the Crimea. There is no news of any major change anywhere along the front. News reaching London indicates little change on the Moscow and Leningrad fronts. Snow has fallen in the Crimea for the first time this year and it is believed that this may hamper the Germans in their operations against Sebastopol and Kerch. A Moscow message states that increasingly cold and bitter weather is likely to have a greater effect on the enemy than snow. Along* the whole front snow has already fallen, but it has not yet stopped caterpillar transport. Numbing and sickening winds, with the temperature around zero, are likely to have a great effect on the enemy troops. The Russians have learnt the lesson of their Finnish campaign. Hundreds of thousands of troops have been trained in the use of skis. Even the Russian artillery has been adapted to ski warfare. The Russians are giving the enemy no rest and chance to strike back. Pressure is still greatest on the two flanks of the Moscow front, at Kalinin and Tula, but no German progress in these areas has been reported. The Russians are fighting back strongly against the enemy movement to cut the vital Vologda railway and encircle Leningrad. Further north stubborn battles are being fought in the Karelian Isthmus. The German and Finnish forces in that area are being held. . Although the position in the Crimea is still serious, the Russians are resisting strongly and marines from the Black Sea fleet are playing a valuable part in the defence of the peninsula. Fighting in the area west of Rostov is restricted mainly to patrol activity. One of the latest stories of German savagery in occupied Russia is that in a town in the Ukraine a German sentry was shot in a street. The Germans surrounded the street, rounded up every man and woman and shot every second person. At another place eight people were shot merely because they asked leave to see their arrested relatives. A dashing exploit by a Russian cavalryman, a member of a crack Turkestan regiment, is reported. Determining to capture a German officer, he waited in ambush till he saw one. Racing after him, he plucked him from his horse and duly handed him over as a prisoner, not even having bothered to bind him.