#counter-offensive

"RUSS INFANTRY AMBUSH SOLID WALL OF TANKS DESTROY 71 WITH FIRE," Toronto Star. May 20, 1942. Page 1. ---- Timoshenko's Army Reports Important New Gains in Kharkov Battle - Germans Drive to South to Ease Soviet Pressure ---- SOVIET A.A. GUNNER KULIER AND 8TH VICTIM --- Moscow, May 20 - Thousands of tanks and hundreds of thousands of men fought in an infernal cauldron of destruction before Kharkov today. The German high command was throwing new masses of machines and men into the battle in a vain attempt to stop the Russian advance. Tank fought tank and man fought man in such a tangle that planes, engaged in a war of their own over the smoke-clouded front, could not intervene. The Moscow radio said Hitler had hurled every available tank in the battle which blazed into new fury at strategic points along the whole 1,800-mile Russian front. Field Marshal Fedor von Bock's German forces were reported "in flight" along the 100-mile front before Kharkov. In one sector German tanks attacked in a solid wall against the Russian centre and flanks, Russian infantrymen, holding their fire, took the shock of the attack and, from a thousand foxholes, leaped out with hand grenades.