Articles from 1944
A short notice from a May, 1944, issue of The Pathfinder reported that there was a fashion among the American sea-going men of the enlisted variety to wear a particular style of earring in their left ear if they’d experienced combat. Don’t take our word for it, read on…
One of the loyal confederates of the American Bund was Anastasy Vonsyatsky (1898 – 1965). It was his sincere belief that Fascism was the only force capable of defeating international communism – and once he conceived of this idea, he was all in: Fascism could do no wrong. Although he worked closely with the American Bund, his true allegiance stood with the Russian Fascist Party in far-off Manchukuo, China
(you can read about Manchukuo here). Vonsyatsky was arrested by the FBI five months after Pearl Harbor and released in 1946.
The American army’s Aberdeen Proving Ground rests on 72,962 acres in Aberdeen, Maryland. Since 1917 it has been the one spot where the U.S. Army puts to the test both American and foreign ordnance and in 1944 the gang at Aberdeen got a hold of a 61 1/2 ton German battle-wagon, popularly known as the Tiger Tank (PZKW-VI). This is a nicely illustrated single page article that explains what they learned.
For further reading about the Tiger Tank, click here.
That administering government agency charged with the management of the Japanese-American internment camps was the War Relocation Authority
…I’m putting it mildly when I say that it makes my blood boil…We shall fight this injustice, intolerance and un-Americanism at home! We will not break faith with those who died…We have fought the Japanese and are recuperating to fight again. We can endure the hell of battle, but we are resolved not to be sold out at home.
Washington, D.C. has always been described as a pretty dull place and the only ones who ever seem to feel differently must have had a good deal of experiences in far worse locations. In this case, I am referring to Iowa and the war-torn portions of the South Pacific, which are the only two locations this YANK journalist had ever called home; so he liked Washington just fine. The author in question, Sergeant Merle Miller (1919 – 1986), does not ramble on about historic bone-yards or any other pedantic clap-trap, but rather presents useful information that a G.I. can apply to his life:
Of course, getting a fair date while you’re in town is no problem. A Canadian newspaperman recently discovered that, judging from ration-book requests, there are 82,000 single girls of what he called the right marrying age of 20 to 24 in town, and only 26,000 men of the same age Therefore, he concluded, a girl has only about a 30-percent chance of getting a husband — or, for that matter, a date
The missing period at the close of the article, I assume, is due entirely to war-time shortages.
To read about the VJ-Day celebrations in Washington, click here.
Samuel Rosenman (1896 – 1973) was an attorney, judge and a highly placed insider within the ranks of the Democratic Party, both in Albany and the nation’s capital. It was Rosenman who helped articulated many of FDR’s policies, wrote numerous executive orders and conceived of the moniker New Deal. He was the first lawyer to hold the position White House Counsel and he was an indispensable advisor to Roosevelt throughout the course of his New York governorship as well as his presidency.
A day by day account by Private George Groh, a member of the 101st Airborne, who joined the 1944 Normandy Invasion as a glider-infantryman.
Here is an interview with the American P.O.W.s who were strong enough to survive the abuses at the Japanese Prison Camp at Cabanatuan (Luzon, Philippines).These men were the survivors of the infamous Bataan Death March:
You were on the Death March? somebody asked him.
Is that what they call it?…Yes, we walked to Capas, about 65 miles. Three days and three nights without food, only such water as we could sneak out of the ditches. We were loaded into steel boxcars at Campas, 100 men to a car – they jammed us in with rifle butts…
The rescue of these men by the 6th Ranger Battalion (U.S. Army) was dramatized in a 2005 television production titled The Great Raid.
Click here if you would like to read more about the 6th Rangers and the liberation of the Cabanatuan P.O.W. camp.
Like other Army and Navy personnel, the members of the Women’s Army Corps have coined their own slanguage. If you hear a WAC say:
I’m off on an orchid hunt, kids – and no PFC. My night maneuvers are gonna be with a varsity crewman.
-you’ll know what she means after you’ve studied this [attached] glossary.
During the last month of 1944 the Yankee movie-goers had a choice of ten new releases to choose from, here are four titles:
• Laura, starring Clifton Webb,
• I’ll Be Seeing You, starring Joseph Cotton and Ginger Rogers
• The Doughgirls, starring Jane Wyman and Ann Sheridan
• Mrs. Parkington, starring Walter Pidgeon and Greer Garson
Each review is illustrated with thumbnail images of the ten films.
In the July 22,1944 issue of YANK the editors saw fit to release the numbers of American casualties that were racked-up during the first eleven days of the allied Normandy Invasion. In the fullness of time, the numbers were adjusted to be considerably lower than the 1944 accounting; Pentagon records now indicate 1,465 were killed, 3,184 were wounded, 1,928 were registered as missing, 26 were taken prisoner.
It is interesting to note that YANK did not sugar coat the report.
Of the total US figure, 2499 casualties were from the US airborne troops (238 of them being deaths). The casualties at Utah Beach were relatively light: 197, including 60 missing. However, the US 1st and 29th Divisions together suffered around 2,000 casualties at Omaha Beach.
FDR’s D-Day prayer can be read here
Additional facts and figures about the U.S. Army casualties in June of ’44 can be read in this article.
Appearing in 1944, this article listed numerous reports relayed to the FBI by amateur spy-hunters of all the imagined foreign agents who they stumbled upon daily. Some of the accounts ended up being true and lead to actual confessions, but most were just plain silly – either way, the G-men had to investigate each account.
Sand Diego wanted women for its war industries. Since the beginning of the war boom San Diego has cajoled, bribed and appealed publicly for women. And San Diego got women, not only for the war industries, but for every other conceivable job. They became letter carriers, bus drivers, high-altitude window washers, milk deliverers, office workers.
The attached YANK MAGAZINE article was written from the perspective of the American G.I.; it lays out a few peculiar facts about life in the World War Two Brazilian Army:
Every type of South American racial strain is represented. This gives a squad the appearance of a capsule League of Nations, except that there are no blonds.
Read about the day Brazil declared war on Nazi Germany…
Mexico preferred not to participate in the war, but they did kick all the Fascist spies out of their country, click here to read about it…
No doubt about it: for the fashionable, young Deutchen Soldaten on the go, the preferred choice in pillboxes is the portable variety! And you’d best believe that when those slide-rule jockeys back in Berlin lent their lobes to what the trendy book-burning crowed in Italy and Russia were saying, they jumped to it and created this dandy, 6,955 pound mobile pillbox that was capable of being planted almost anywhere. Better living through modern design!
Four pictures and few well-chosen words concerning a German command and reconnaissance car as well as two Nazi half-tracks (one capable of carrying ten men, the other twelve).
Click here to read about the American Army half-tracks.
Here is the skinny on the Ford Motor Company’s M8 Greyhound Armored Car as it was presented to the olive-clad readers of YANK MAGAZINE in the summer of 1944:
Armored Car, M8, 6×6: the Army’s latest combat vehicle, is a six-wheeled, eight-ton armored job that can hit high speeds over practically any type of terrain. It mounts a 37-mm cannon and a .30-caliber machine gun in a hand-operated traversable turret…
