FAR BEYOND KHARKOV

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 87, Issue 201, 26 August 1943, Page 5

FAR BEYOND KHARKOV

ADVANCING RED TROOPS Recd. 7 p.m. Rugby, Aug. 24. To-day’s Moscow messages report that while the rums of Kharkov are still smouldering and mined buildings continue to explode, the Russians advancing to the north and south have left the city far behind. The retreating Germans kept on shelling Kharkov for a time, but their guns are now too far away and many nave boeii abandoned. The main Soviet forces of tanks and infantry in the eastern Donetz Basin are advancing along the railway, while scouts, sappers, and storm troops widen the breach, infiltrating the enemy defences and cutting the ways of retreat. The German resistance is bitter everywhere, counter-attack following conn ter-attack. Railway lines are changing hands time and time again, but tae Russians continue to advance. The Germans had prepared Kharkov for a long and stubborn defence. Street by street, it had been fortified. All stone houses were fitted with emplacements for artillery and machineguns. Every street was mined and all the large buildings were surrounded by minefields. The Russians applied the tactics of fmali groups of storm troop; which originated in Stalingrad. Tney infiltrated in depth into the city, rendering the most formidable .strong-points untenable. To the last, the Germans seemed confident that they could hold Kharkov and expended men and material in costly counter-attacks round the city. The decisive German reverse was the failure to regain control of the Kharkov-Poltava railway, in which area several German divisions perished in vain. Thousands of young people of Kharkov came into the streets to greet their liberators after many months hiding in cellars and attics to escap? forced labour drafts. German hopes of profitably shortening the Eastern Front have been frustrated, firstly by the defeat of their offensive against the Kursk salient and secondly by the Russian drive Westward between Kharkov and Sumy. The latter offensive not only placed Kharkov itself in an untenable salient, but endangered the whole German position between the Donetz and the Dnieper. A further threat is formed bv the bridgehead south of Izyum which the Russians have been gradually extending over many weeks. Whether or not the Germans have decided to abandon Donetz industries. It seems certain that they would do anything to avoid leaving their garrirons there to b? surround'd. If the enemy should be forced to evacuate