Word: viipuri
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Around three sides of Karelia's crumbling capital Russian field artillery stood hub to hub, and under the torrent of shells they threw, the Red Army last week battered its way into Viipuri. Craftily the Finns fought their retreating battle, leaving small rear-guard detachments to hold up the advance while their main force fell back in good order. A ruined town makes the best of all fortifications, and as the Russians entered the outskirts of Viipuri, Finnish machine guns spat tellingly from the gaping windows of the all-but-demolished houses. The invaders had to occupy Viipuri block...
...week's end the Russians claimed to have reached the railroad station, but all around the station, in the heart of the city, the weary Finns still held out. They have no hope of holding the city long. Viipuri was condemned when the Finns abandoned Koivisto Fortress, blowing up their heaviest artillery and leaving the Russians a clear road across the frozen Gulf of Finland to outflank the city (TIME, March 4). Last week the Russians took this road. Another force drove past Viipuri to the northeast. And along what was left of three railroads the main body...
...their whole line of communications. This meant that if the line broke anywhere the rest of the front-line troops would be cut off from their supplies. And so last week the Finns began retreating in the middle of the isthmus, swinging their army back like a door, with Viipuri as the hinge. To the north and west of Viipuri civilians were cleared out of towns and villages, while the Army began preparing new positions between the Isthmus and Helsinki...
Under the shells and bombs that crashed into Viipuri last week Finnish men and women worked day & night. Brawny peasant women toiled side by side with boys and old men, burrowing trenches, throwing up breastworks, putting together makeshift pillboxes. Beneath the high-pitched scream of shells in air and the sharp thunder of their explosions sounded the dull bass background music of the battle south of the city. Day by day it came nearer...
Into its fourth week went the battle of Viipuri and Finland's second city was now in the battle line. Finnish artillery, wheeled back from the main positions of the Mannerheim Line, spat at the Russians over the heads of Viipuri's defenders. Behind Karelia's beleaguered capital, along the 30-mile stretch of lakes and canals between Lake Saimaa and the Gulf of Finland, other workers were building new defenses. Few people doubted that if Viipuri fell Finland would still fight...