VITAL RAILWAY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 November 1941, Page 5

VITAL RAILWAY

CUT BV THE GERMANS LENINGRAD-MOSCOW LINK. f SOVIET SPOKESMAN’S GRIM ' ' PROMISE. (By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright) LONDON, November 16. The Russians,report from Kuibyshev that the Germans have cut the vital railway line from Leningrad to Vologda in the region of Tikhvin, <lOO miles east-south-east of Leningrad. The Germans have thus cut Leningrad’s remaining indirect railway link with Moscow, and the Russians are opposing , strong forces which are attempting to join with the Finns, cutting Leningrad's communications across Lake Ladoga. On the Donetz front the enemy are making “dreary and hard progress from one burnt-out or flooded coal-pit to the next wrecked factory,” Kuiby j hev reports. The Russians'says that in the Crimea heavy fighting has been going on after the Germans redoubled their efforts to' get a foothold at Sebastopol and Kerch. The enemy are recklessly sacrificing thousands of men. The position is serious, but the defences are being held firmly. The Germans are keeping up their pressure in the Tula and Kalinin sectors, but the Soviet spokesman, M. Lozovsky, said that the Germans were on the defensive in many sectors on the Moscow front. “The Germans are digging themselves., in., for a winter campaign, but we will dig them out again and bury them properly,” he said.

The Russian winter is coming into its own. “Pravda” reports a sharp fall in the temperatures on all the battlefields, and says that some Germans have already been found frozen to death. The first “frozen” tanks have been seen, and snowdrifts on the battlefields are hindering others.