YUGOSLAV PARTISANS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 14 January 1944, Page 4

YUGOSLAV PARTISANS

-4 PLAYING BIG & VITAL PART IN WAR CASE STATED BY WOUNDED OFFICER. VALIANT FIGHT BEING WAGED FOR FREEDOM. (By Telegraph—Press Association —Copyright) (Received This Day, 12.15 p.m.) LONDON, January 13. “Thirty-six German and satellite z Divisions are at present doing their utmost on seven fronts to crush the Partisan armies of Yugoslavia,” says Lieutenant-Colonel Vladimir Dedier, who has been attached to Marshal Tito’s staff for 21 years. Lieutenant-Colonel Dedier is now recuperating in Cairo from severe head injuries. In a special article distributed by the Associated Press, he asserts that more German divisions are engaged in Yugoslavia than on any front except Russia. “Although the Partisans are fighting without heavy artillery, antiaircraft guns and tanks,” he says, “we have carried out an offensive even against German main bases. On January 1 this year we broke through the German defences at Banjaluka, the headquarters of the Second German Armoured Corps. This German base has been liquidated. 2.000 Germans killed and several hundred captured. When the task was accomplished, the Partisans withdrew, as the town could not be defended against new German tank divisions. This victory was achieved entirely with armaments captured from the enemy when people rose three years ago against Hitler. Only every tenth man had a shotgun or outdated rifle. There were many fighting women in the front line in the assault against Banjuluka, some of whom are expert with hand-grenades. Women also hold certain commands in our liberated territory, now more than half of Yugoslavia. Our army has increased from 100,000 to 300,000. Our peoples—Serbs, Croats, Slovenes, Macedonians and Montenegrins—at the finish of our war of independence will form a free, democratic, federal State, in accordance with the Atlantic Charter, allowing all free people the right to choose their own form of government at free elections. For this principle our people have spilled rivers of blood and are still fighting today.”