GRIM CONFLICT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 May 1944, Page 4

GRIM CONFLICT

PRIOR TO THE FALL OF SEBASTOPOL OVERWHELMING RUSSIAN ASSAULT IN RECOVERY OF "HEROES' CITY” (By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright) (Received This Day, 12.25 p.m.) LONDON. May 9. Describing the final phase of the battle for Sebastopol, Reuter’s Moscow correspondent, in a despatch written before the announcement of the fall of Sebastopol, said: “In bitter and bloody fighting, picked groups of Red Army storm troops are punching their way through the outskirts of the smoke-hung city, which is crackling with the crash of bombs and the unremitting drumfire of the Russian artillery. Red Air Fcrce planes are ceaselessly flying over the battle area. “The Germans face an earth-rending concentration of guns and planes,” the correspondent added, “and cannot avert the inevitable end. The Russians today stormed forward in the half light of dawn and went into battle cheering and wearing medals, because this is the final battle for the ’Heroes' City’ and revenge for 1942. Russian gunners are manhandling guns over shellchurned earth and firing point-blank against German knots of resistance. Russian snipers are keeping up a constant harassing fire against Germans crawling up with supplies and picking, off German officers attempting to rally their troops. German dead lie thick around positions where there was heavy bloodshed in von Mannstein’s storming of the city in 1942. The German news agency’s military commentator says Sebastopol has lost much of its strategic value since the front was shifted back from the Dniester Estuary.