Yank Magazine – Page 10 – Old Magazine Articles

The SS Prisoner at the U.S. Army Field Hospital
(Yank Magazine, 1944)

This tight little essay, titled The German, serves to illustrate a small piece of life in a very big war. Written with a sense of melancholy by a winsome American medical orderly posted to a hospital not too far behind the front lines, it explains how he slowly got to know one of his German patients, a member of the SS, and how secretive and generally unpleasant he seemed to be.

Click here to read an article about the women of the SS in captivity.

Broadway Theater in Wartime
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

New York’s Broadway theater scene during World War II:

Show people will never forget the year 1944. Thousands of men and women from the legitimate theater were overseas in uniform -actors and actresses, writers, scene designers, stage hands – and all looked back in wonderment at what war had done to the business… Letters and newspapers from home told the story. On Broadway even bad shows were packing them in…

Click here to read a 1946 article about post-war Broadway.

The 9th Air Force on D-Day
(Yank Magazine, 1944)

An eye-witness account of the U.S. Army Ninth Air Force A-20 bombers as they made their runs on D-Day:

There was no time to lose on this mission. Hitler’s armies might well be driving over those crossroads toward the beachheads at this minute. This was not just an ordinary mission. It was the beginning of a mission that some day might end all combat missions.

‘There’s London.’ Rafalow announced, over the intercom.
I glanced down. The acres of buildings looked quiet and peaceful.
You’d almost think there wasn’t a war on.’
A few minutes later his voice came over the intercom again, but this time it was high-pitched with excitement. We were over the English Channel where it was quite obvious there was a war on.
‘By God, look at the ships!’ he yelled.

D-Day-Plus-One
(Yank Magazine, 1944)

D-Day for my outfit was a long, dull 24-hour wait. We spent the whole day marooned in the middle of the English Channel, sunbathing, sleeping and watching the action miles away on the shore through binoculars. We could hear the quick roars and see the greenish-white flashes of light as Allied Battleships and cruisers shelled the pillboxes and other German installations on the beach.

On D-plus-one we took off for shore. Four Messerschmidtts dove down to strafe the landing crafts as we headed in, but a Navy gunner drove them off with a beautiful burst of ack-ack…

Wearing the U. S. Navy Sailor Hat
(Yank, 1945)

The following article and illustration were clipped from the World War Two G.I. magazine, YANK; which we have included in our study of American World War One naval uniforms because we couldn’t imagine that the regulations involving the wearing of the lid could have been that much more different from the days when Admiral Simms ran the shop.

The News of Hitler’s Death
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

The June 1st issue of YANK MAGAZINE did a fine job of capturing the excitement that was felt in civilized quarters as the allied armies poured into Germany from all sides. As the news of Hitler’s suicide spread throughout Europe, a YANK reporter took a sampling of G.I. opinion on the subject. One G.I. in Italy opined:

Now they say Hitler is dead. Maybe he is. If he is, I don’t believe he died heroically. Mussolini died at least something like a dictator, but somehow I can’t figure Hitler dying in action…

Read an article about some bored newspaper editors who were curious to know what the headlines would look like if Hitler had been killed in 1941.

Some Trivial Facts About Hitler
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

Assorted observations from the man who operated Hitler’s elevator at Berchtesgaden can be found herein.

What you won’t find herein is a piece of Hitler trivia that I just picked-up. The story goes that the American comedian Bob Hope was given a tour of Hitler’s bunker shortly after the German surrender. Accompanied by a U.S. colonel, the two men brought lots of American cigarette cartons with them to bribe the Russian guards (the bunker was in the Soviet sector); Hope walked away with the enormous banner that was draped in the dictator’s lounge, as well as the handle off of Hitler’s toilet. The toilet handle has remained among the comedian’s possessions in Toluca Lake, California ever since.

Read about the earliest post-war sightings of Hitler: 1945-1955

Hitler’s Last Days in Power
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

YANK reporter Harry Sions listened in as sixteen Nazi officials, having known and worked with Hitler in various capacities through the years, sat back and recalled the events of Hitler’s last 365 days in power. Much was said regarding the failed assassination attempt (project Valkyrie) but some of the more interesting content refers to the closing days in the bunker with Bormann, Keitel and Jodl.

It was reported that shortly after he took up residence in the bunker, Hitler’s hair and mustache was transformed to a bright white, yet he was not the only man in Europe in need of hair dye; click here about these other fellows.

Berchtesgaden: Hitler’s Mountain Retreat
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

A report on what Hitler’s Bavarian retreat, Berchtesgaden, looked like after the 101st Airborne got through redecorating the place. This is an amusing article written by Yank reporter Harry Sions, who seemed to really want to know what Hitler’s taste in furnishings, books and movies truly was like. However the most entertaining parts of the article were the interviews with Hitler’s dimwitted domestic staff:

Is it true, we asked her, that the Fuhrer chewed on rugs when he became excited?

‘Only you Americans believe such nonsense,’ she replied.

The DUKWs of W.W. II
(Yank Magazine, 1944)

The American Army’s amphibious vehicles called the DUKWs (Ducks) were first manufactured by General Motors in 1942 and were issued to both the U.S. Army and Marine Corps. 2,000 were shipped to the British, over five hundred found their way to the Australian military and 535 were passed along to the Soviet Army. They have earned their sea legs a thousand times over and have even ventured across the English Channel.

The attached YANK MAGAZINE article was one of the first articles to have ever been written about them, and quite ironically plays-down the revolutionary nature of the invention:

Japs realize the value of the DUCKs. They once issued a communique saying their bombers sank ‘one 5,000-ton ship and one amphibious truck.

A German Advantage in the War
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

The Chief of Staff’s 1945 report concerning the U.S. Army’s progress and set-backs during the course of the war mentioned one element:

in which the German Army held an advantage almost to the end of the war. The first was the triple-threat 88-mm [field gun] which our troops first encountered in North Africa…

When the U.S. Home Front Found Out About Nazi Atrocities
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

The editors of YANK reported that the week of VE Day the

…first-run movie houses showed films of a kind seldom if ever seen by American audiences. The films, made for the most part by the U.S. Army signal corps, showed piles of human bones, mass graves and beaten, starving men who looked more like corpses than human beings…Homefronters sat in shocked silence, broken now and then in by low gasps.

‘About the Russians in Normandy”
(Yank Magazine, 1944)

About the Russians in Normandy…and they weren’t much help to Adolf, either. Here are two stories, one of which tells how Russians, captured and forced to fight for the enemy, turned the tables on Jerry; the other which tells what happened when the Americans liberated Russian prisoners from a concentration camp.

Marlene Dietrich Did Her Bit
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

A post-game interview with Hollywood star Marlene Dietrich (1901 – 1992) concerning all the many places throughout the European Theater of Operations that she performed before Allied audiences, at times performing very close to the German front line.

Marlene Dietrich’s only daughter, Maria Riva Dietrich (b. 1924), wrote that her mother, feeling a deep sense of pity and gratitude, made love to a very large number of front line soldiers.

Click here to read about the woman who entertained the U.S. troops during the First World War.

When General Eisenhower Came Home
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

The General had seen welcomes in Paris and London and Washington and New York, but he got the warmest reception of all when he hit his boyhood home town, little Abilene, Kansas.

As soon as the Eisenhower party was seated a gun boomed and the parade began. It wasn’t a military parade. It told the story of a barefoot boy’s rise from fishing jaunts on nearby Mud Creek to command of the Allied expeditionary force that defeated Fascism in Western Europe.

In 1944, a class of sixth graders wrote General Eisenhower and asked him how they can help in the war effort; click here to read his response…

Wartime Brooklyn
(Yank Magazine, 1945)

A four page article regarding the city of Brooklyn, New York during the Second World War – make no mistake about it: this is the Brooklyn that Senator Bernie Sanders inherited – it isn’t far from the N.Y. borough named Queens, where numerous Communists resided.

• Almost half the penicillin that was produced in the United States came out of Brooklyn

• Forty Five percent of of the Brooklyn war plants were awarded the Army and Navy E or the M from the Maritime Services

• Throughout the war, the ranks of the U.S. Armed Services were swollen with Brooklyn sons and daughters, 280,000 strong.

Click here to read an article about one of New York’s greatest mayors: Fiorello LaGuardia.

Interview with a Home Front War Worker
(Yank Magazine, 1944)

It would seem that a good many World War II servicemen believed that they were missing out on all that home front glamour that had kicked-in as a result of the full-employment and booming economic prosperity of wartime America; and so Yank correspondent Al Hine was quickly dispatched to Turtle Creek, Pa. to pen this small article about Frank Hanly, an average guy in a average war plant. He works hard, rests and plays like we used to and he isn’t getting rich.

The truth is this army reporter was instructed to report on the blander side of home front living – the facts were far brighter; there was money to be made and fun to be had and you can click here to read about it…

The Sole Surviving Son Rule and ”Saving Private Ryan”
(Yank Magazine, 1944)

By posting this notice that appeared in a 1944 issue of YANK, we had hoped to play a useful roll by bringing to an end some of the bar room arguments and late-night dorm bickerings that came about as a result of the unlikely story line that was presented in the movie, Saving Private Ryan (Paramount Pictures, 1998).