Changing the wording to "beyond" means if you hit an element in the rear and kill it, then the element in front of it will also be killed. i.e. you can kill an element beyond one that is attacked in its rear and this wording was adopted specifically to enable that to happen. Why do people think the oppoite is true?
There are a number of different cases here.
If I hit an elephant in the rear and destroy it, any friendly (to it) element in front of it is destroyed too. So far, so good - that's what supposed to happen.
If I hit foot in the rear and destroy it with Wb, any friends to their front are
not destroyed, because the bullet about being destroyed behind foot destroyed by warband specifies that the
frontal opponent of the destroyed element is warband, and an element attacked in the rear doesn't have a frontal opponent. Similarly for Bw rear-ended by Kn. This is presumably not what's supposed to happen, so it seems Phil and the STAVKA made a boo boo here.