Imperial Valley Press

RUSSIANS SPLIT NAZI ARMIES IN HALF
Reds Cut Vital Ukraine Railway Joining Armies Soviet Cavalry Sever Most Important Line Held by Germans in Taking City Of Zhitomir; 224 Guns Herald Victory

LONDON. Nov. 13. (UP)-The Red army has captured the vital junction city of Zhitomir on the Ukraine front, severing the most important German-held railroad and virtually splitting the Nazi armies in half.

The smashing victory-scored last night as the result of "an impetuous blow of cavalry and infantry"-was announced today in an order of the day by Marshal Josef Stalin.

Red army troops severed the Leningrad-Odessa railroad as a result of the capture of Zhitomir.

The Pripet marshes and Red army spearheads now constitute a vast wedge splitting the German lines, and the severing of the Leningrad-Odessa railroad leaves Adolf Hitler's forces without an important north-south line of communications unless they choose to fall far back into Poland.

ORDERS 24 GUNS To celebrate the great victory of the Red army Stalin ordered the firing of 24 artillery salvoes by 224 guns.

The Russians now are expected to continue two main drives almost due westward. The southern drive will use the Pripet marshes as protection for its right flank. and the northern drive would rest its left flank on the vast marshes.

Swiss reports have told of Romanian peasants fleeing westward in advance of the onrushing Red army, and the fall of Zhitomir is expected to increase the speed of the evacuation.

A few miles to the north another Soviet column slashed to within (Continued on Page 6, Col. 1)

Reds Cut Vital Ukraine Railway

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eight miles of Korosten-Zhitomir leg of the Leningrad-Odessa railroad. Red army guns laid down a barrage which knocked out German transport on the vital line which runs a little over 50 miles from the Polish border.

Front dispatches credited the Cossacks with the capture of Korostishev, 15 miles east of Zhitomir.

Striking on concert with Soviet armored units, the horsemen burst out of a forest near the town, engaged the main body of German forces, and sent them back.

NAZIS REGROUP

The Germans regrouped and counter-attacked several times, but they were unable to stem the joint pressure of the Cossacks and tank forces which swept through Korostishev.

The bitterest fighting on the Kiev front was in progress southwest of Fastov. The Germans massed the cream of their remaining Ukrainian strength there in a desperate bid to check the Russian drive and relieve the pressure on Zhitomir.

Far to the southeast the Russians blasted a wedge into the northeastern defenses of Kerch, citadel on the eastern tip of the Crimea, and were battling through the suburbs of the flaming town.

The Germans and Rumanians had fired and dynamited Kerch's principal utilities and public buildings in tacit recognition of the city's ultimate fall, but were resisting savagely in compliance with Adolf Hitler's orders that the Crimea must be defended at all cost.

Even repeated Axis counter-attacks, bolstered by reinforcements rushed up from the central Crimea, failed to halt the Soviet advance, however, and at one point the Russians encircled a large German garrison in a northeastern suburb of Kerch. Fifteen hundred of the enemy were killed and hundreds captured.

TRY EVACUATION

German cutters attempted to evacuate part of the encircled force by sea, but were blasted to the bottom by Russian artillery. Many Germans drowned.

While opposing ground armies were locked in desperate fighting on the approaches to Kerch, Russian and German cutters, motor-boats and barges battled in the narrow reaches of the Kerchenski strait and off the Crimean shore.

The Germans were striving to cut the Soviet supply line from the Taman peninsula in the Caucasus, but a field dispatch to the newspaper Pravda said scores of Soviet vessels were plying the turbulent waters to pour an unceasing stream of troops, arms and other equipment into the bridgeheads northeast and south of Kerch.

Russian tanks and heavy artillery, including rocket guns, were reported in action on the Kerch front.

Radio Moscow in a special broadcast called on troops on the Kerch peninsula and the ships reinforcing them to "liberate the Crimea."

'DESTROY ENEMY'

"Fight and destroy the hated enemy!" the broadcaster pleaded. "Our motherland is calling you. Do your duty."

More than 100 towns and villages were captured on a broad arc beyond Kiev, including Krassilovka, 55 miles to the northwest.

South of Rechitsa, some 150 miles north of Kiev, the Russians were overcoming enemy resistance "step by step."

Several hamlets were captured and 1000 Germans were killed. Sixteen German tanks, five self-propelled guns and 38 field guns were destroyed.