Spring is Coming

In the sunny Crimea, on the southern end of the great Russian battlefront, soldiers of two nations saw the first signs of spring last week. To the Germans, the first buds and the first faint greening of the grass made a welcome sight. Their High Command announced the coming of spring. But to the Russians spring was bad news. Against the threat of burgeoning trees, they fought savagely from Kerch on Crimea's eastern tip to the snowbound Leningrad pocket.

They also fought effectively. Hints of the headlong desperation of their smashing drives into Nazi lines even crept into German communiques. Berlin admitted that the Russians were on the edge of the Soviets' Pittsburgh -Kharkov -by saying that the city had been under heavy artillery fire. Bald Marshal Semion Timoshenko was within 20 miles of Dniepropetrovsk and its wrecked power dam, bulling his way ahead at the tip of a sharp salient.

Southwest of Moscow, where winter still lay white and heavy, Russian soldiers smashed hard at the German force ( 24,000 by Russian account) pocketed at Orel, devoutly hoped that the Germans' tank expert, Colonel General Heinz Guderian, was in truth penned up there.

Berlin had its own explanation of the pockets where German fighting men had been encircled: they were advanced cen ters of resistance which would soon be come alive.

Wishful as this sounded, it might be true unless Russia could destroy the centers before the ground hardened after the melting of the snow. And so Russia turned on its own heat. Guerrillas drove deep into the loosely knit German lines, sold their lives stubbornly and took their toll.

The airmen were busy too. Russian pilots worked hardest at knocking down transport planes with supplies for the German "centers of resistance." The Nazis sent pursuit planes to protect the transports. Result: counter-claims of destruction that put the total of downed planes for the week in the hundreds on both sides.

At Staraya Russa, 300 miles northwest of Moscow, where Colonel General Ernst Busch is penned up with a German Army, the Russians saw their best hope of destroying the enemy. General Busch had been there since last September, and he had plenty of reason to regret the dashing autumn drive of his army. For there was no doubt that Russia was crimping him tighter & tighter. He needed the spring as badly as any man on the front. And, above Moscow, the thaw was still six weeks away.

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