Stage Wait

Warsaw was in flames. The partisanforces of General Bor which nearly four weeks ago had risen at the approach of the Red armies, fought fires and Germans with equal gallantry. From housetops they dropped Molotov cocktails on Germantanks. Their women operated 100 field kitchens and first-aid posts.Unable to reach Warsaw's cemeteries, they buried their dead in parks and public squares. Their food and water were running short.

Nevertheless they held their strongholds in the central district. They even attacked German positions, destroyed half of a battalion, captured a platoon. From somewhere, it seemed, they had got a mysterious transfusion of new strength.

Last week Mediterranean Allied Air Forces headquarters in Italy disclosed that, since early August, 100 four-engined British bombers had been sent out on the 1,750-mile nonstop route to Warsaw and back, to drop weapons and ammunition by parachute to the harried patriots. The pilots had to throttle down low over the city to make reasonably sure that their consignments reached Poles and not Germans. Twenty-one bombers were shot down; several more failed to deliver their loads.

General Bor was grateful. He sent a message: "We bow to the crews who have given their lives."

Open Contempt. Why had the bombers not made use of nearby Russian bases for delivering supplies in Warsaw, or why Bad the Russians themselves not given air supply to the Bor force? The answer was not immediately forthcoming but Moscow did have something to say about the politics of the situation. The Warsaw rebels, said Pravda, had been "foully deceived by a group of adventurous and political speculators of London emigre governments."

Meanwhile the Red armies had been stalled on the Warsaw approaches by fierce assaults of German armor. The Polish rebels had vainly tried to prevent four Panzer divisions from getting through to the east for this fight. The Russians were forced to evacuate Ossow, a town seven miles from the Warsaw suburb of Praga--the first time they had lost a town since their summer offensive started. At week's end the Nazis were still able to mount 20 attacks in one day.

The Germans also launched massive attacks at the corridor held by the Russians on the Gulf of Riga, apparently trying to blast an escape route for the German divisions trapped in Latvia and Estonia. The Germans claimed that they had shelled General Bagramian's positions from cruisers in the Gulf, that they had established contact with their pocketed forces. The Russians admitted abandoning several places west of Riga. To the east, however, Generals Bagramian and Masslenikov were squeezing the pocket hard.

Cocking the Pistols. The world waited, as for a long-delayed stage entrance, for the Red armies to cross the East Prussian border. The Germans defending their own soil threw into battle armored units brought from Italy and "heavy catapult appliances" (possibly rocket platforms). The iron-muscled and iron-willed young Jewish general, Ivan Chernyakhovsky, had 150,000 men--by German count--massed on the province's eastern border. After an artillery barrage of 3,000 shells in 20 minutes, Chernyakhovsky's infantry closed in along the Kaunas-Konigsberg railroad. General Georgy Zakharov's army group also closed in over swampy ground from the south.

But the outstanding Soviet success of the week was achieved below Warsaw on the Vistula, where wily, leathery Marshal Konev captured the important rail town of Sandomierz, destroyed the Nazi garrison of three divisions, enlarged his bridgehead across the Vistula to 1,600 square miles. Adolf Hitler was said to have called Konev's position "a pistol pointed at the German empire."

All along the line Red generals were cocking similar pistols, waiting for the Germans to weaken and let go of their wrists. Then the pistols would go off.

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