Word: smolensk
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...into that sector. Only the Führer and his intimates could say when the drive would begin. The Russians were putting on one last effort to take the German key points; they were attacking all along the line, but especially in the central part of the front, around Smolensk. In the far north, where winter still gripped the land, they were said to be sending reinforcements into Leningrad on a double-track railway over the ice of Lake Ladoga; in the far south also they were moving up reinforcements. There the land was thawing into the same awful gumbo...
...center, they were untouched in Smolensk. The Russians were straining to blast the German concentrations from Rzhev and Vyazma, about 100 miles away...
...ROAD TO SMOLENSK-Erskine Caldwell-Duell, Sloan & Pearce...
Equally alien is Caldwell's account of an efficiency of desperation which might drive Americans mad but seems to work in Russia. Prize samples: 1) On the trunk highway from Moscow to Smolensk, an unbroken line of supply trucks moved day & night at a constant 20 miles per hour, without collision even when traffic was doubled. Reason: collision would have meant liquidation for the colliders. 2) Russians took orders so literally that one railroad-crossing guard refused to raise the bars and let Caldwell's stalled car get off the tracks to safety; a train was approaching...
...gains did not come. Instead a communique announced a full-scale attack on the central front, a push by tank squadrons and massed infantry, sharp aerial fighting. In the first day, the communique said, the Russian spearhead had reached to within 50 miles of the German winter headquarters at Smolensk...