Word: bagramian
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...armies had jammed through for gains up to 60 miles on a 175-mile front. This week they had sent the Germans reeling back to within twelve miles of Memel on the sea, to within three miles of the northern East Prussia border. Credit went to Generals Ivan Bagramian and Ivan Chernyakhovsky, who figured much more prominently in the Eastern Front news last July than they have lately...
...Russians claimed that they had 15 enemy divisions "on the verge" of entrapment between Memel and Riga. Allied observers took this with some salt, recalling that when Bagramian drove to the Gulf of Riga last summer, 20 to 30 German divisions were supposed to have been bottled up in the north. The net bag, when that region was finally cleaned up last month, was not much more than five divisions...
...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...
Shavli, cut the railroad from Riga to Tilsit in East Prussia, and left only a one-track line through Memel as an escape route for some 30 German divisions on the Baltic fronts. Bagramian then blocked even this forlorn loophole by broadening his salient northward to the junction at Jelgava...
This seemed like an opportune time to strike at East Prussia. At week's end, young General Chernyakhovsky, who had paused on the border for a whole fortnight, slashed into the Suwalki triangle, which Germany annexed in 1939. Bagramian's drive toward Riga while Chernyakhovsky waited had probably cost the latter his chance to be first to the sea. Now Chernyakhovsky held in his grasp a greater honor: that of seeing his divisions the first to tread the earth of Germany...