The Waterbury Democrat., 1944-02-14

(Continued from Page D
 points, destroyed telephone and telegraph lines on a wholesale basis, and opened the way for the Red Army advance.
 In the central Ukraine, sabre swinging Cossack cavalrymen joined in the final phase of the extermina- tion of the encircled German eighth Army below Cherkasi. Killing nine out of every 10 Germans in their path, the Russians squeezed the last survivors into a pocket running 12 miles north and south and eight miles east and west.
 General Leonid A. Govorov's three main columns on the northern Bal tic front overran more than 300 towns and villages and cleared the entire east bank of late peipus in driving to within 40 miles north east and northwest and 50 miles north of Pskov, six-way railway junction 100 miles below Leningrad
 The northwestern column seized Ostovitski, only a few miles from 8 narrow channel connecting Lake Peipus and Lake Pskov. The Rus sianS were expected to encounter little difficulty in forcing the chan mel for an attack on Tartu, whose fall would cut the main trunk rail- way between Tallinn, capital of Estonia, and Riga, capital of Latvia.
 Northeast of Pskov, Govorov's forces captured the junction of Luga and pressed on along the Leningrad- Luga-PSkov railway to within 40 miles of the gateway city and also engulfed Dolzhitsy, several miles west of the railway.
 The northern column captured the important road junction of Ly- dadi, 50 miles above Pskov.
 The Russians cleared some 2,OOO square miles between Lake Peipus and Luga in the first five days of their offensive along a 70-mile front. Guerrilla forces joined regular Red Army units in a series of sweeping outtlanking naaneuvers over the wooded and marshy terrain that routed or annihilated German gar riSonS.
 2,OO0 Slain
 One Soviet unit alone was cred- tied with killing 2,000 Germans and destroying 53 guns and the Soviet high command announced in its midnight communique that the en- emy had suffered great losses in men and material".
 Luga, a city of 24,00O and juno tion of the main Leningrad-Psk railway and & branch line from Novgorod, fell yesterday after a fierce street battle in which the Germans had to be blasted out of stone buildings which they had con- verted into individual forts.
 With Luga in their hands, Govo- rov's Leningrad armies threw the main weight of their assault against Pskov, 8 city of 60,000 persons nine miles east of southern Estonia and 26 miles northeast of Latvia. Its fall probably also would doom the German stronghold of Staraya Russa, 115 miles to the east.
 KorSun Cinched
 In the central Ukraine. Red Armies clamping a stranglehold on Korsun, center of enemy resistance in the Cherkasi pocket. captured Sotniki, five miles to the northwest, and Arbuzina, 1-2 miles to the north- east. and killed 600 more of the trapped enemy troops.
 Front dispatches said every stream, hillock and grove was the scene of 8 last-ditcf struggle as the Germans fought for their lives with unparalleled ferocity.
 The main German forces south- west of the pocket attacked with large infantry and panzer detach- ments almost ceaSelessly in an at- tempt to break through the Soviet ring of encirclement. but were thrown back with loss of 80 tanks. Oflciai reports said the approaches tC the Soviet fines were 'strewn with German corpSes."