“ROAD TO BERLIN”

Waikato Times, Volume 194, Issue 22246, 15 January 1944, Page 5

“ROAD TO BERLIN”

DRIVE THROUGH MARSHES BY=PASSING OF GERMANS i MOSIR NOW FAR BEHIND (Received Jan. 15, 11 a.m.) LONDON, Jan. 14 By the capture of Mosir and Kalenkovichi the Red Army has cleared the way for a new advance across the Pripet Marshes to Pinsk and Brest-Litovsk, says the British United Press. Both captures dominate the railway to Pinsk. The two towns fell after General Rokossovsky’s men blasted a way for Russian tanks through a miniature Siegfried line. The German retreat from Mosir across seme of the wprst country in the world is immediately threatened by General Vatutin’s right wing in the Sarny salient, which has advanced northwards towards the westward railway across the Pripet Marshes, which is the Germans’ only way of escape. General Rokossovsky’s troops before the fall of Mosir by-passed these Germans and were pressing westwards. Now they and General Vatutin’s men are in a position to converge against the next important junction, Luniniec, on the RovnoWilno railway, and eventually threaten the Orsha-Minsk-Warsaw line, the last main railway serving the Germans in White Russia. Mosir is an industrially unimport- i ant town witn a population of 11,000 | but it was a bastion protecting the | eastern entrance to the Pripet j Marshes. Its fall clears the way for a Russian advance towards Pinsk along a path described by the Red Army as a short cut to Berlin. The Moscow radio declared that Cossacks had already left Mosir far behind and cut off the escape routes. These Cossacks, according to the British United Press Moscow correspondent, are carrying out dare-devil raids on German garrisons, massacring sleeping Germans and driving others into the ice-covered marshes, into which they fall, sink and drown. Nearing Key Centres The Russians are little more than 100 miles from the key centres of Baranovichi, south-west of Minsk, and Brest-iJtovgk, and 60 miles from fhe important rail junction of Kovel. The capture of communication centres one after another :s steadily severing the links remaining between the northern and southern halves of the German front in the east. The Russians’ progress also threatens Rovno and they are now very' close to Shepetovka. The chief German efforts seem to be still directed to shoring up the southern arm of the front between Vinnitsa and the Dnieper bend, and they are still clinging to the deep salients the Russians have created for them. All the time the Russian initiative steadily lengthens the front.