Technique of Soviet

Observation Post, Volume 1, Issue 32, 24 December 1942, Page 2

Technique of Soviet

MEETS COLD FACTS OF WINTER CAMPAIGNING. — What will this Russian winter mean —to the Russians? Without being rhetorical, it can be said that the Russian winter needs no objectives; the cold facts are enough. At from 38 to 41 degrees below zero Centigrade, which will prevail along this winter’s fighting front for weeks at a time, men clearing the roads leading up to the front line will have their faces bandaged like doctors in an operating theatre — save their noses. The thousands of horses that will be pulling sledgesand they are by the thousands behind the Russian lines—will have their sweating coats frozen white, as if covered with sugar (writes Negley Farson). If you were there you would see Cos sack officers get down from their horses and walk painfully along the main roadsto restore the circulation to their feet; you would notice fires burning at the edges of wrecked bridges across rivers and ravines—for this ground is frozen two or three feet deepand no pile can be driven until the earth has been softened by flame. You would also see (as I have seen) horses being carted past you on sledges, dead, and sawed into sections. • —why try to cover this up?—you would know- that they would soon be turned into food. CIVILIANS’ SITUATION But the civilian popmation of the great, fuel-less cities will probably suffer worse than they have ever suffered before, even more so than during some of the terrible winters of frost and famine following the 1917 revolution. i As to food, the Red Army always has

a tremendous grain reserve—this sometimes amounts to millions of tons; the guerrillas, coming from the villages, will certainly have laid aside provisions stored in the forests and other hiding places for their winter fighting. But the civilian population will be dependent upon whatever rations can be brought to Moscow and the big industrial cities. It is this body of people, among whom are the workers, who will face the severest privation. , But all these Russians are actually workers, and indications are that, there will be probably sufficient essential nourishment to see them through this winter. ' At Leningrad now they are cutting down trees of the suburbs, tearing down many of their useless wooden houses (the old-fashioned ones made of whole logs) for this winter fuel. THE COLD TECHNIQUE. The Red Army soldier carries nc blankets. His padded and quilted tunic and breeches, his ..greatcoat, and his felt boots are considered sufficient covering —when backed up by his cold-tech nique. The first thing the Russians do when they recapture a village is to rush to the wooden houses which are still burning, tear them —then make dugouts about 6ft. deep in the thawed ground. * They cover these with planks, logs, tarpaulins, even pine boughs. Then they set up the small stove which each platoon of the Red Army always carrier stick its small smoke stack up through the improvised roof, and in a few minutes some 40 or 50 men have created

a home from home. Similarly, in the forests—and the guerrillas always do thisthey will make quick igloos of snow, cover and line them with pine boughs, also lay a floor thick with pine boughs; and again set up their njiraculous little stove. Pine boughs over their smoke stack breaks the smoke so that it cannot be detected from the air. And Russian soldiers, .particularly the men and women guerrillas, can spend a Russian winter this way as comfortably as hibernating bears. ,So much for that; but a man shot, say, in the leg, with a wound which he would consider slight elsewhere in the world, runs a definite chance in Russia not only of losing that leg but the other leg and both arms as well. That is, if the first-aid men do not reach him in time. Now against this winter, which knows neither friend nor foe with its impartial cruelty, the Red Army has long ago been trained in a highly specialised shelter-technique; also its millions of fresh reserves, who are picking up the, weapons of their gallant fallen comrades now, were trained last winter in dug-outs, and real trenches behind the Urals, .in the bitterest of snows. The guerrillas, fleeing from their wrecked and burned villages, and now harrying the flanks of the Germans from the depths of the dark forests, ■have reverted to the traditional Russian cold-technique, with improvisations.