Russians Holding Out Grimly

Wairarapa Times-Age, 16 June 1942, Page 3

Russians Holding Out Grimly

THOUGH OUTNUMBERED FIVE TO ONE SOVIET COUNTER-ATTACKS ON KHARKOV FRONT LONDON, June 15. The battle for Sebastopol tonight reached a new pitch of intensity. A commentator in Moscow says the ferocity of the Nazi attack can rarely have been surpassed in the annals of war. Regardless of, the cost, the enemy is constantly throwing in fresh troops. The defenders cannot hope to receive reinforcements on anything like the same scale. The Nazis are making a supreme effort to batter their way into the fortress, with a completely unsparing sacrifice of manpower, especially Rumanian manpower. Soviet dive-bombers are causing havoc among enemy tank concentrations. In one day they destroyed 13 enemy tanks and damaged six others. The men of the Russian Fleet Air Arm are also making magnificent efforts and are compensating to some extent for the numerical superiority of the Germans in land-based planes. Sebastopol is now being shelled by artillery as well as bombed by dive-jbombers. Every man and woman capable of bearing arms has been given a rifle and told how to deal with parachutists. A correspondent says that some sectors are now little more than shell and bomb craters, but the defenders are holding out grimly, though outnumbered five to one. Fighting is increasing in violence in the Kharkov sector, but the position remains substantially the same. The Russians have made local counter-attacks with some success. The Nazis have suffered heavy losses. In one sector 3,000 were killed in two days’ fighting.