Word: vilna
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Earlier, when he snuffed out the last enemy resistance in Vilna, Chernyakovsky had won Moscow's maximum victory salute: 24 rounds from 324 guns. The Germans had desperately wanted to hold Vilna, not only to keep open the exit gate from the Baltic areas, but as a shield for East Prussia. They held out longer there under attack than anywhere else in this offensive-but only for five days. Even after the city was completely surrounded, the Germans reinforced their garrison by dropping paratroopers...
...Facts. However these questions may eventually be answered, the fact remained that the German line, which less than a month ago bulged far into White Russia, now bellied even farther the other way, toward Germany. At Vilna, the Russians were 220 miles from the starting line of their offensive only 18 days...
...Vilna, they were less than 100 miles from East Prussia. If the Germans north of the gap between Vilna and Konigsberg failed to get down through it before the Russians closed it, there would be no Dunkirk, no escape by sea, for them...
While 36-year-old General Chernyakhovsky's infantry troops battled Germans in the streets of Vilna, his tanks and cavalry bypassed the city, ripped into Lithuania...
...north, Marshal Bagramian began an encirclement of Dvinsk in Latvia. To the south, Marshal Rokossovsky captured the key junction of Baranovichi, whose railroads lead to Vilna, Bialystok and Brest-Litovsk. In the treacherous Pripet Marshes, other Rokossovsky forces skirted the bogs along road and rail embankments, captured Luninets and attacked Pinsk...