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RED ARMY ON FINNISH FRONT
"TRAGIC
MOST MISERABLE LOOKING MEN IN UNIFORM
(By Leland Stowe, our Special Correspondent
in Finland. By Telegram)
THE CHINA MAIL, JANUARY 9, 1940
WRETCHES"
Karelian Isthmus, To-day. The Russian troops which the Kremlin High Command has thrown against the eastern side of the Karelian bottle- neck are probably the most miserable looking creatures to be seen in uniform in this part of Europe since Napoleon's half-starved tatterdemalions straggled back from Moscow. The only differences seem to be that Bonaparte's men were largely excellent soldiers whereas Stalin's conscripts have straggled up from Leningrad to fight the Finns without a shadow of adequate training for their very tough job.
This is not anti-bolshevist propa-, wretches. ganda, but hard fact. It may go for to explain the extremely unflattering showing which the Soviet forces have made against the Finns in the war. It is also possible that it does not apply to all the Red infantry employed on
But there Is this 750 miles front. no denying the testimony of your own eyes.
to
have
Looking at them I won- Russia could dered whether Soviet possibly be as hollow a shell as these poor devils seemed to indicate. I also wondered whether Josef Stalin, ins- tead of being the diabollcally clever dictator we have heard so much about,
was simply crazy.
These were samples of the army which Moscow sent out to conquer all Finland-as one of them later ex-
plained-by December 23, as a birth- day present for Stalin. The Finnish Colonel led us into the room where prisoners sat with their heads bend- ing forward like typical hobo derelicts in a Borough Court.
Repeatedly we have seen and talked Russian prisoners at the moment they were just brought in from the
correspondents lines. Fellow conversed with other Soviet infantry men on two other points of the western All important side of the isthmus. details of these Red prisoners were identical as to appearance and condi- tion. It is impossible to describe them otherwise than as helpless tragic curtly.
"These are the men who are sup- posed to bring us culture," he said
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All wore steel helmets with the red Soviet star painted on them. All but a few had faces of men who had never had a chance in life, of simple workmen who were minuscule parts in a gargantuan incomprehensible machine. The twisted features of six of them were definitely subnormal. The seventh's eyes gleamed con- tinuously with a wild fanatical light.
The Russians were army overcoats. of cheap part-wool mixture and uni- forms of quilted cotton-the latter peculiarly suitable for pneumonia traps at 60 degrees north in mid- December! None of the men we saw possessed high boots, but they have
ordinary shoes and several of them as a result had their feet so frozen that they could scarcely walk. An- other of the Red prisoners seen by our colleagues had shoes so shabby that his toes stuck out.
One of the correspondents question- ed the prisoners in Russian and with- out any interpreter.
None of them
admitted belonging to the Communist Party.
All said they were reservists, mostly of the 1925 class, and had been called up only three months ago. Al- though from different points of Rus- sia by birth they had all been em- ployed in the Leningrad district. They said they had been told that the Finns had attacked the Soviets and that they must fight to protect Len- ingrad from the capitalist invaders.
We asked a Leningrad restaurant waiter whose name was Dimitri about his cotton uniform.
on this eastern side of the isthmus said to us: "The men who attacked here are no army. They are cannon fodder, but no soldiers."
"When the Red tanks came Russian forward," he said, "the soldiers tried to hide behind them. Such an Infantry we have never Maybe the Soviet have an Infantry which attacks by itself, but until now we have not seen it."
seen.
The Finnish officers insist that the Russians are afraid to move in the forests at night and many of their simple-minded soldiers are convinced that the Finns are in league with evil explaining how the Finns glide noiselessly through the forests by day and night and raid their Ac-
spirits, thereby
camps like American Indians. cording to general testimony, the Rus
síans have no stomach for this type of
warfare, a method in which the Finns
are masters.
Any number of Finnish officers told us that the political army of the gpu was extremely active behind the Russian infantry, When the Reds were replused they often heard ma- chine-guns soon afterwards in the Soviet rear. One captured Red army sergeant is quoted as saying: "It is impossible to fight when being shot at from both from and rear." Perhaps this helps to explain the dispirited groups of prisoners we interviewed here.
In some sectors, fresh troops re- placed those which the Russians first threw into the war in the Karelian Isthmus, Presumably some of the new Soviet forces must have been drawn from regular infantry and it may be that the Rus- sian units will make a much better showing before long. But they will now be compelled to attack Finnish positions which are carefully chosen and expertly prepared for defensive Dimitri also told us what the Rus-warfare-and they will have lost en- sian soldiers
tirely the possibility of developing are being fed on as fighting rations in this bitter northern momentum for their thrusts. winter. Once a day a bowl of barley porridge, he said, and about two and a half pounds of bread for five men or half a pound aplece per day.
"No, it is not warm," he said. "Don't you freeze?" we asked.
"It all depends on how cold it gets," he replied, with the only faint trace of humour discernable In any of the seven, "Yes, very many are frozen, we all have fro- zen feet."
"They told us we would get 35 grams of meat a day, but we never got it," Dimitri said. He is still carry- | ing a tiny bag of tobacco two-thirds empty. He said he had been issued four such rations "of tobacco ̈during his three months in the Russian army. What about pay? One of the pri- soners declared that when drafted he had been promised half the amount he was earning as stevedore, 1.c. one ruble, forty-five, "I have only got ten roubles," he said dully. We prled out of him the fact that he had left his wife and his three children in Len- ingrad.
Most of these men were between 37-40 and most had one or several children. Tears ran down the cheeks of one man when first he was asked a direct question. They had deserted together by crossing the Taipale River at night in boat.
The Red prisoners said they had been well treated by the Finns, nor was there any indication to the con- trary. They were simply pitiful hu- man wrecks nearly without hope- creatures who obviously had been cowed long before they ever crossed the Finnish lines. They were painful to look at, painful to converse with-- surely among the most discrediting articles any government could ex- port in its army.
Since this type of Soviet soldier has been taken prisoner from one side of the Karellan Isthmus to the other, the Finns have been completely mysti- fled by the calibre of the Soviet troops which have been fighting here. They do not understand how the Karelin could send such ill-equipped, half- trained man into a major offensive against the strongest fortified sector of Finland and one which strategically is the most difficult to penetrate. Fin- nish officers are even more bamed that Stalin could risk the prestige of his much-extolled Red Army with a de- finitely large percentage of very in- ferior troops.
The Finnish Colonel
comman
To most observers it appears that Stalin tried to break through a first- class army in a highly fortified posi- tion with fourth-class troops-having failed dismally, he will soon have to use the best human meterial he has got.
The Finnish officers are unani- mous in declaring they cannot under- stand why Soviet Russia chose the last day of November to launch a war- in snow-protected Finland. It re- mains incomprehensible to them that the Russians should have attacked at first with "cannon fodder" instead of real soldiers.
The Finns are about ready to be- lieve that after all Stalin is crazy-or perhaps that, like Hitler, he has mere- ly found a von Ribbentrop.
(World Copyright)
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