Articles from 1944
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
All global tensions aside, the U.S. Army could not find any faults at all with the motorcycles that BMW was making for Adolf Hitler during World War II. After having spent much time testing and re-testing the thing, they reluctantly concluded, This is as good as any motorcycle in the world (it was probably a bit better…).
Click here to read about the firm belief held by the German Army concerning the use of motorcycles in modern war.
This posting remarks about a number of concerns: assorted factoids about the German PZKW II tank and it’s 1944 down-graded status as an offensive weapon to a reconnaissance car; tips for GIs as to how to drive German vehicles and, finally, the German interest in salvaging tank parts from captured enemy armor:
Here was the first report on the kangaroo courts that were held at frequent intervals in the American POW camps that housed captured German soldiers and sailors. It seems that it was a common practice to level the charge of treason on one of the inmates, put him in the docket where, just like the courts at home, he would fail to present an adequate defense and soon find himself condemned to death by his fellows. Beaten to death by his former compatriots, the corpse would then be presented to the American camp authorities who would see to the burial.
Click here to read about the actual event…
