VALUABLE AID

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 January 1944, Page 4

VALUABLE AID

GOOD COMMUNICATIONS NETWORK PARTICULARLY IN CAPRICIOUS WINTER. UNUSUAL PERIODS OF THAW. (By Telegraoh—Press Association—Copyright) (Received This Day, 12.35 p.m.) LONDON, January 7. hi none of its offensives thus far has the Red Army possessed, in its immediate rear, such a good network of communications as it has gained in the Ukraine, where, in a capricious winter, cross-country operations are highly dangerous, says “The Times” Moscow correspondent. The Red Army is benefiting from what apparently was a major German blunder—the concentration of armour at Jitomir and the subsequent retreat westwards, away from the southern sectors where so much is now needed. A Reuter correspondent says he has not met Russians who can remember such freak weather, with days of thaw in January, which is generally in the middle of severe winter, but it is an ill wind that blows nobody good. The thaws are revealing land-mines which the Germans had hidden under the snow, making the work of the Red Army sappers easier.