There is No Night

The Germans crossed the Don. On sunny days, Russian shells and bullets from the eastern bank and bombs from the sky raised bright geysers around the bodies of the dead. On a cloudy day, when the Stormoviks flew low at the pontoon bridges and rubber boats of the invaders, many a German trooper's last sight in life was the dappled carpet of rain on the river. Along the western bank, where bombs and shells clawed great gaps in the lines of trucks and tanks, Germans died by thousands, and hospital trains bore many more thousands to the rear.

But more survived. They lived to see the broad, green lowlands along the Don above Voronezh, or to climb the high bank below the city. Then they, too, died under the Russian fire. But more came. They lived to bring up machine guns, light artillery and mortars, heavy guns and tanks --the flesh and metal of the bridgeheads which the Germans at last secured east of the Don. Above them the Luftwaffe, flying in numbers usually stronger than the Red squadrons, ceaselessly pounded at the Red Army.

Slowly the Germans crept toward Voronezh. They crossed and cut Russia's important railway link between Moscow and Rostov. They commanded the middle reaches of the Don, although they had yet to master its lower channel, where most of the river's traffic moves, where Russia breeds her fighting Cossacks. Some 100 miles below Voronezh, the Nazis seized Rossosh. Then they drove on south and eastward.

There Is No Day. At every step of the advance the Germans paid in blood & steel. At the points of greatest crisis the Red Army brought up its precious KV tanks--precious because they were Russia's best and because they were so few. Censors permitted the first description of them. The KV (for Marshal Klimenti Voroshilov) is a massive 46-tonner, with a 76-mm. main gun and thick armor which turns shells from enemy 75s and is often proof against fire from the Germans' famed 88s. The Russians say that it is almost fireproof, a decided improvement over German, British and U.S. tanks.

These armored darlings were used for crushing, surprise assaults on the Nazi rear and flanks, or as mobile forts at points which had to be held at any cost. A Soviet correspondent, recording the KVs' feats, remembered that men were in the tanks. Said he, reporting that their crews sometimes fought for 36 hours without rest: "For them there is no day, there is no night--there is only battle."

There Is No Victory. At the beginning of this week's battles, 15 days after they launched their main drive in the south from Kursk and Kharkov, the Nazis had pushed 150 miles farther east in the central Don region than they had gone at the peak of their autumn rush last year. They had nearly all of the rich Ukraine. They had pushed themselves threateningly between Marshal Semion Timoshenko's main armies in the south and Moscow's defenders to the north. At Voronezh, Rossosh and Svoboda, they had cut or threatened the rail lines which supply Russia's southern armies from both the north and the east. Farther south they were now headed at full pace for the Volga and the rich industrial area of Stalingrad. They had nearly flanked Rostov's defenses, threatening to envelop a city which has a symbolic meaning for the Russians. When the Germans briefly took Rostov last November, all seemed to be lost for Russia. After the Red Army retook Rostov, and thus drove the invaders from a gateway to the Caucasus, the war's tide turned. So Russians think; "As Rostov goes. . . ." This week, despite all the Red Army's reverses, Rostov was still Russian.

Ahead of the Germans who did not die was still the immensity of unconquered Russia: the Volga, the Urals, the mountain barriers of the upper Caucasus, the unconquerable Russian spirit, the might and will of the U.S. and Great Britain, the looming menace of a second front by air and land . Both Berlin and Moscow communiques recorded more German gains. For the Germans too there was no night, no day, no victory. There was only battle.

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