The Waterbury Democrat., 1942-07-14

an 1llEfllO Oi uBhisuAB bSbWCcu tanks, artillery, machine guns and infantrymen as the Germans drove to the city's suburbs.
 Tn a desperate attempt to storm the city, the Germans threw in their third motorized division, to add to the masses of tanks, infantry and artillery which had crossed the Don.
 The Germans attacked in @ tightly-packed mass with disregard to their losses on 8 small sector.
 As they met the Red army, with the guards shock troops at its head, a heavy barrage of artillery and machine gun fire broke out, while Russian planes swept over the battlefield at low altitude, with their machine guns blasting the packed German formations.
 Hundreds of guns, hurling shells into the area, sent up pillars of smoke and dust which soon covered the entire battle field, dispatches from the front said.
 Villages and collective farms, even tiny hillocks, were taken and re- taken. Again and again the Red Army men, knowing that on this offensive the Germans had staked everything they had, stormed into direct artillery and machine gun fire to retake positions they had lost.
 From rooftops and churchtops in suburban villages which TOW were in the battlefield, Russian gunners rained machine gun and light ar- tillery shells on the advancing Ger mans.
 Fight From Bushes
 Infantrymen fought from bushes and ditches as the enemy ap- preached the suburbs, and then they began fighting in the village streets. three bridgeheads on the east bank of the Don. Russian artillery and planes kept the river under a con- stant fire.
 One bridgehead after another was reduced, but the Germans, despite heavy losses, poured men across the river to establish more. Their losses were described as gigantic.
 Fighting, almost equalling that at Voronezh in ferocity, continued without pause in the Boguchar sec tor, 14O miles to the southeast at the northern end of the big bend of the Don.
 The midnight communique said the high command had ordered Russian withdrawal south of Bogu- char which put the Germans less than 190 miles from the Volga river industrial area of Stalingrad. A similar withdrawal was ordered in the third key sector of the southern front east of LlsichanSk, only 12O miles from Rostov, key to the Cau- caSuS.
 The threat to 6talingrad and the Caucasus and its oil had become grave and its appeared possible the German high command might order 8 frontal offensive in the north, aimed at Moscow.
 Tens of millions of Russians looked toward the allied west for help and 8 second front.
 The Russian army was fighting for every yard of ground, taking a heavy toll in German and other Axis dead, and was withdrawing, be- fore numerically overwhelming forces, to new lines selected by the Red army command, which stopped the German army last fall by a similar defense.
 The midnight communique de- Scribed the front as follows:
 Voronezh, 300 miles southeast of Moscow: The Russians fought fierce ly against Germans who broke through to the area of the city, on the east side of the Don. Russian tanks and infantry were throwing back desperate German attacks.
 Boguchar, 14o miles southeast of Voronezh: Tense fighting continued against the German tank and in- fantry masses after a withdrawal by the Russians to new positions. The Russians repulsed several Ger man attacks and in one small sector killed 500 Germans. The Germans were bringing up endorsements.
 Lisichansk, 120 miles southwest of Boguchar and 120 miles northwest of Rostov, key to the Caucasus: East of the city the Russians withdrew methodically to new defensive posi- tions by order of the high command, under Marshal Semyon Timoshenko, who broke the German offensive at Rostov last fall.
 Rzhev, 135 miles west northwest of Moscow on the Kalinin front: The Russians were compelled to re- treat before numerically superior enemy forces after killing 10000 Germans and losing 1000 killed and 5 900 missing in battle now in its 18th day.