GREAT BATTLE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 April 1944, Page 4

GREAT BATTLE

OPENED FOR ODESSA BUT STRUGGLE MAY NOT BE BRIEF SOVIET TROOPS ADVANCING AT NIGHT (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) (Received This Day, 12.15 p.m.) LNODON, April 7. “A great battle for Odessa itself has opened,” declares the British United Press Moscow correspondent. “The Red Army holds a belt of land 13 miles above Odessa, extending from east to north-west, from which it is presing on against the German defenders. General Malinovsky, taking advantage of frosty nights, has been leapfrogging towards Odessa, throwing troops forward in the night time over roads which are quagmires by the following noon, when the sun has melted them. “The Russian arc is tightening against Odessa and the Russians are smashing successive lines of defence as soon as the Germans man them. Red Army columns are penetrating improvised lines while German working parties are still throwing up fortifications on them.” The Red Air Force has taken the lead in the battle for Odessa, says Reuter’s Moscow correspondent. With the plains before the city dangerously soft, General Malinovsky has switched a big weight of his striking force from artillery to bombers. He is.also using hundreds of tiny single-engined U2 biplanes to supply his forces. Nevertheless the battle for Odessa is not expected to be a brief struggle. The correspondent adds that the Germans launched a heavy relief attack south-west of Tarnopol in an effort to rescue the garrison and are .also mounting repeated counter-attacks to relieve their untrapped troops in the Skala area. The Germans, trying to break out of the encirclement at Skala, meet massed fire from hundreds of Red Army guns which have been laboriously brought up.

ATTACK ON CARPATHIANS MOUNTAIN TROOPS BROUGHT UP FROM CAUCASUS CONTROL OVER BALKANS AT STAKE (Received This Day, 12.25 p.m.) LONDON, April 2. Moscow correspondents agree that fighting on the Bessarabian front, where the Rusisans are advancing towards Rumania,' apparently has momentarily died down. Reuter’s correspondent says it seems that forward Red Army units have slackened their pace to allow supply units to catch up with them, but meantime crack mountain troops from the Caucasus are moving up to participate in the doming battle for the Carpathians. They say they would rather storm the highest peak than march in such mud as confronts them, but the mud is worse for the retreating Germans.

The Germans are abandoning thousands of lorries in a sound condition because it is easier to flee afoot. There are instances of German officers switching their troops from lorries to' horse-drawn carts and finally cutting the traces, mounting the horses and making off, abandoning their troops. “The Times” Ankara correspondent says the Germans, with Rumanian assistance, are feverishly working to perfect a defence line running from the Carpathians to Focstani, thence across the Seruth River to Galati and the Black Sea. The final stand will presumably be made on that line, which is about 100 miles from the Ploesti oilfields.

The bombings of Budapest and Bucharest have given the impression here that the great battle for the Balkans has virtually begun and that both sides are preparing for a clash in the near future. This would decide the fate of the Danubian Basin and perhaps of the whole of South-Eastern and Central Europe. Reuter’s Istanbul correspondent reports that German airborne troops from Salonika have completed the occupation of the Bulgarian Black Sea port of Varna, 245 miles by sea from Odessa.

HEAVY CAPTURES AND THOUSANDS OF GERMANS WIPED OUT. SOVIET OFFICIAL REPORT. (Received This Day. 12.30 n.m.) LONDON, April 7. The killing of 4000 Germans who tried to break out of the Scala trap and the encirclement of five to six German divisions in the Rasyelnaya area, are announced in tonight’s Soviet communique. It says the Red Army west of Skala continued to fight for the destruction of the encircled Germans and repelled an attempt to break through westwards. Four thousand Germans were killed. We captured five Junkers, 52 transport planes, seventeen guns, seven tanks and 1.400 motor vehicles. The Russians south-west of Tarnopol continued lo repel attacks by strong tank and infantry forces attempting to break through to the encircled units. The Russians in the Kishinev sector, after two days’ fighting, cantured the important German stronghold of Orgieyev, 23 miles north of Kishinev. The Red Army in the Odessa sector fought its way into 60 places, including Belayevka, 22 miles west of Odessa. The Russians north of Rasyelnaya surrounded five to six German divisions, which are being wiped out. The Germans yesterday and today, in this area, left over 5,002 dead on the battlefield. We took I,OQO prisoners and captured 64 guns and 24 tanks. At the railway station of Veselykut, the Russians captured 1,100 wagons loaded with equipment, including food, storage and factory equipment, which the Germans were removing from Odessa to Germany. The Russians, after the capture of Rasyelnaya, took 44 guns and much booty.