A PHOTOGRAPHIC RECORD
OF ALL THEATERS OF ACTION
CHRONOLOGICALLY ARRANGED
VOL. 3
New York
WM. H. WISE and CO., INC.
1944
Copyright 1944
WM. H. Wise & CO., Inc.
Printed in the United States of America.
| PAGE | |
| STORY, SEPTEMBER THROUGH FEBRUARY | 1031 |
| PICTURE HISTORY, SEPTEMBER-FEBRUARY | 1033 |
| STORY, MARCH THROUGH AUGUST | 1179 |
| PICTURE HISTORY, MARCH-AUGUST | 1181 |
Photographs in this publication were obtained from the following sources:
Acme Photo
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1175, 1181, 1197, 1200, 1210, 1211, 1216, 1222, 1230, 1238, 1246,
1248, 1254, 1255, 1257, 1258, 1259, 1263, 1265, 1277, 1320, 1325,
1339, 1340, 1356, 1358, 1362, 1373, 1374, 1375, 1381, 1383, 1393,
1394, 1395, 1414, 1415, 1418, 1419, 1431, 1432, 1433, 1434, 1447,
1452, 1460, 1469, 1478, 1479, 1496, 1498, 1504, 1507, 1508, 1509,
1510, 1511, 1512, 1513, 1514, 1515, 1516, 1519, 1521, 1522, 1524,
1527, 1533
British-Combine
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British Information Service
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1370, 1371, 1377, 1502
British Official Photo
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Canadian Army Photo
1285, 1292, 1317, 1342, 1359, 1364, 1365, 1370,
1371, 1377, 1502
Canadian War Information
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French Press and Information Service
1196, 1199, 1359
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International News Photo
1084, 1108, 1109, 1110, 1196, 1340
Netherlands Information Bureau
1208, 1209
Odhams Press
1040, 1041, 1042, 1043, 1044, 1045, 1056, 1057, 1062,
1063, 1064, 1065, 1099, 1106, 1112, 1113, 1160, 1161, 1162, 1203,
1206, 1207, 1223, 1291, 1414, 1415
Official Coast Guard Photo
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Office of War Information
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Official U. S. Marine Corps Photo
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1094, 1095, 1104, 1105, 1116, 1318, 1319, 1397
Official U. S. Navy Photo
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1066, 1067, 1081, 1082, 1083, 1090, 1091, 1092, 1096, 1111, 1136,
1137, 1138, 1140, 1141, 1157, 1166, 1167, 1168, 1169, 1170, 1172,
1173, 1176, 1177, 1193, 1195, 1201, 1204, 1212, 1213, 1214, 1225,
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1410, 1411, 1440, 1441, 1444, 1446, 1448, 1500, 1518, 1525
Planet News Ltd
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Press Association
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Sovfoto
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1368, 1379, 1384, 1385, 1396, 1413, 1425, 1430, 1435, 1476, 1528
U. S. Army Air Forces
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1237, 1251, 1269, 1270, 1271, 1322, 1323, 1331, 1341, 1406, 1436, 1437,
1442, 1443
U. S. Army Signal Corps Photo
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1506, 1508, 1517, 1523, 1526, 1529, 1531, 1532
In this third volume the reader reviews a pageant of Allied victory. Throughout the fiscal year which ended September 1, 1944, the forces of the United Nations, with one lone exception, were making steady and sometimes rapid progress in liquidating the enemy. The exception, of course, was the Chinese front where the inevitable exhaustion of the defender and the inability of her allies to provide supplies brought success to the Japanese. But, in other areas of the Far East and on the European Continent, the year was one of triumph for the armies of America, Britain, Russia and their Allies.
In the Pacific the new great strength of the United States Navy resolutely battered the Japanese from island to island, taking one important enemy bastion at a time. There was the gradual re-conquest of New Guinea, the hop to Bougainville in the Solomons, and the bloody seizure of the Gilbert Islands. Later came the Marshalls, Saipan and Guam. The great Japanese naval base at Truk was so surrounded as to be practically useless, both from a defensive and offensive standpoint.
In Europe the fifth year of the war had hardly opened when American and British forces invaded the Italian peninsula. Throughout the ensuing months Soviet forces swiftly pushed back the Germans from Russian soil. By September, 1944, Stalin's armies were in Poland, Rumania and threatening the East Prussia frontier. Then in June came the establishment of a long awaited western front and the eventual liberation of France.
In devoting an entire volume to the fifth year—instead of one volume for two years--the publishers have sought to give complete coverage of the greater number of battle fronts and avail themselves of the larger amount of picture material available. Because of the climactic nature of the events during the last six months of the year, it seemed editorially sound to devote more space to this period, a decision which accounts for the unequal distribution of space between the first and second halves of the year.
THE PUBLISHERS
In the early morning of September 3, 1943, the long awaited Allied Invasion of the European continent began. From bases in recently won Sicily, British and Canadian forces crossed the Strait of Messina and landed in the Calabria province of Italy. A beachhead was established with relative ease from which two columns progressed, one northwards up the west coast, and the other northeast across the Italian boot. On the same day, although the announcement was withheld until September 8 when it became effective, a secret armistice was signed by the Badoglio government and the Allies. This document called for the capitulation of all the Italian armies and left the defense of the peninsula entirely in German hands.
Americans entered the Italian fight on September 9, when, with British troops, they sailed from North African ports and landed at Salerno, about 30 miles southeast of Naples. Led by Lieutenant General Mark W. Clark, this force fought seven days, in one of the bloodiest engagements to date, before their commander could announce on September 16 that the beachhead was firmly established. While this struggle went on the British made rapid strides along both the west and east coasts. Taranto, the great Italian naval base, was taken September 10, and Brindisi, on the Adriatic Sea, fell two days later. Americans broke the deadlock at Salerno on September 17 and met the British Eighth coming up the west coast. The Allied battle line was then extended 225 miles across the Italian mainland and the effort to push the Nazis out of Italy had really begun.
The Allied advance was given great impetus when Foggia with its strategic network of airfields was taken on September 28th. On October 1, the Allies entered the battered Port of Naples, the first of the big Italian cities to fall. A few days later the Nazis braked their retreat along the swollen banks of the Volturno River, some 30 miles north of Naples.
In the Fall of 1943, American and Australian strength began to register in the South Pacific. Although the Japanese still maintained the remnants of a force on Guadalcanal, it was being liquidated as rapidly as slow-moving jungle warfare permitted. On New Guinea, General MacArthur's legions, having long since removed the threat to Port Moresby, began their attack on the key points on the northeast coast. Salamaua, one of the more important Japanese bases, was taken on September 14, and Lae, of equal strategic value, fell on September 18. Another Japanese stronghold, Finschhafen, fell October 3.
The plan of battle was to neutralize the Japanese base at Rabaul on New Britain Island. While the operations on the New Guinea coast provided one arm of this pincer movement, the other demanded a northward progress in the Solomon Islands. Kolombangara Island fell to the Americans on October 11, and, on November 2, Bougainville was taken by Marines in a sharp engagement preceded by a naval battle in which the Japanese lost five warships.
During this period, American air strength gradually achieved the superiority that had been sadly lacking in the first phases of the Pacific campaign. MacArthur's big, land-based bombers were constantly lashing out at key Japanese points. The largest force of fighter-escorted bombers thus far to operate in the Pacific area raided Rabaul on October 14. The result was the incredible score of 177 Japanese planes destroyed, 123 ships and harbor craft sunk, at the cost of only 5 American planes. A naval task force, with considerable carrier strength, attacked Rabaul on November 5 with equally favorable results. When it steamed homeward, the American fleet left behind it two heavy Japanese cruisers on the ocean bottom, 5 badly damaged, and several other warships of a lighter caliber in doubtful condition.
Americans launched their heaviest amphibious assault of the war when they struck at the Gilbert Islands on November 20. The largest naval force yet assembled in the Pacific prepared the way by a furious pounding of the Japanese defenses. For the first time in the Pacific theater, the big guns of the battleships were brought into play in an effort to destroy the shore installations. The main objectives were the islands of Tarawa and Makin. The Marines landed in the early hours of November 20 and found that the naval bombardment had failed to smash the coconut log and concrete emplacements that lined the beaches. In terms of time and ground gained, the battle for Tarawa was one of the most sanguinary of the war. When the island was safely in American hands by November 22, a count showed 1,026 Marines killed and 2,557 wounded. Makin and Abemama, of lesser importance, were taken with a smaller percentage of casualties.
As the fifth year of the war opened, the Russians were occupied with the monumental task of freeing home soil of the Nazi armies. While the German line in the north held, the last four months of 1943 brought big gains for Stalin's forces in both the central and southern sectors. On September 15, the Germans were forced to evacuate the stronghold of Bryansk, and, on September 26, the Russians rolled into Smolensk. Both of these key cities had been in German possession since 1941, and the comparative ease with which their re-capture was effected gave rise to the belief that German power had reached and passed its peak.
In the south the Russian advances were even more comprehensive. By September 23 they were in White Russia within sight of Kiev, the third largest Soviet city. By early October their armies were stretched 400 miles along the Dnieper River line. Some idea of their progress is given by the taking of Zaporozhye, October 13, and Dniepropetrovsk, October 26.
By this time the advance along the Sea of Azov had passed the isthmus leading to the Crimean peninsula, and Nazi forces within this territory were practically cut off from the Russian mainland. On November 7, the Russians invaded Crimea from the Caucasus across the Kerch Straits, and on the same day Kiev fell after a long siege.
After Stalin's men took Zhitomir on November 13, the Nazis showed signs of bracing. For several weeks they launched a counter-attack that resembled the strength of the old Wehrmacht. They retook Zhitomir, November 19, and endangered other newly won Russian positions. Within a few weeks, however, the offensive petered out, and, on December 31, the Russians again marched into Zhitomir. Three days later they crossed the old Polish border into that territory which became a part of Russia in 1939.
In the north the Russians began an offensive to lift the siege on Leningrad. When they took Novgorod, which the Nazis had held since August, 1941, on January 20, Leningrad was for all practical purposes liberated. It was not until January 27, however, that the Soviet made official announcement of this accomplishment. Another long-held Nazi theater was endangered on February 2 when Russian forces crossed the Estonian border.
The Allied forces opened in mid-October an offensive calculated to bring the Italian campaign to an end. Heavy artillery fire and air-bombing were opened up all along the Volturno River line. Ground was slowly and painfully gained until Cassino was reached on January 12, and here the Americans and British were stopped in their tracks. At the end of February Cassino was still holding out.
The Allies executed a combined flanking maneuver and a short cut to Rome on January 22 when they landed at Anzio and Nettuno, both points about 30 miles below Rome and some 50 miles northwest of the existing battle line. While the initial landings were gained with a minimum of casualties, the beachheads were not secure until the end of February.
In December American forces strengthened their grip in the Bismarck Archipelago by the invasion of New Britain. A landing was made in the Arawe area on December 15, and, on December 26, a beachhead was established at Cape Gloucester. Australians made their contribution by driving towards Madang on New Guinea, although it was not evacuated by the Japanese until mid-February.
The biggest American victory in the Pacific since the Gilbert Islands' landings came on February 1 when the Marshall Islands were invaded. This time a naval barrage of sufficient intensity and length almost completely wiped out shore defenses, and casualties were comparatively light. Kwajalein and Roi were speedily taken, although some resistance lasted on the Eniewetok atoll until the end of the month. The first blow at Truk came on February 16 when a carrier task force raided the installations of the Japanese bastion. The American planes downed 201 Japanese aircraft and sunk 21 ships. American losses—17 planes. The first six months of war in the Pacific ended with the American invasion of the Admiralty Islands on February 29.
From the political standpoint the most important development of this period was the joint conferences held at Cairo and Teheran by the heads of the four leading United Nations. President Roosevelt, Prime Minister Churchill and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek met at Cairo from November 22 to November 26. Several days later Roosevelt and Churchill journeyed to Teheran where they met with Premier Josef Stalin.
The Allies move into Europe
September 3, 1943
ITALY INVADED
On the morning of September 3, British troops under command of General Sir Bernard L. Montgomery crossed the narrow Strait of Messina and effected landings at Reggio Calabria and the invasion of the continent of Europe was under way. The Eighth Army proceeded to make advances along the East and West Coasts, and, on the 9th, the Allies took a long gamble and won as the Anglo-American Fifth Army under the command of Lieutenant General Mark Clark established a beachhead at Salerno. It was probably the riskiest overseas offensive since the British landed at Gallipoli.
Invasion of Italy opens the fifth year
September 3, 1943
MESSINA STRAIT CROSSED
In the early dawn of September 3, 1943, the fourth anniversary of Great Britain's declaration of war against Germany, British troops under the command of General Sir Bernard L. Montgomery crossed the narrow strait separating Sicily from Italy and landed in Calabria, pushing north to San Giovanni and to Palmi. On the same day the signing of a secret military armistice between the Badoglio government and the Allies, effective September 8, was announced. While the landings were going on planes from bases in Africa bombed the railroad yards at Bolzano, Trento and Bologna. At Bolzano the bridge carrying trains to Brenner Pass was smashed by explosives. The men of Montgomery proceeded to push east along the bottom of the "toe" as American and British shore batteries in Sicily and the guns of Royal Navy units covered a continuous movement of reinforcements and supplies across the narrow strait. For several days prior to the actual invasion the guns of H.M.S. Rodney and Nelson had shelled Nazi defense posts along the Calabrian shore and the invaders did not encounter much difficulty as the initial landings were made. In this picture, fog curtains the activities of the British Eighth Army as they reached the Italian mainland. A landing craft unloads men and material for the start of what was to be the crusade to rescue The Eternal City from her Germanic conquerors and also restore the Italian way of life to the suffering inhabitants of Italy who had been kept under the heel by their own leaders and the German hordes.
The Warspite kicks the toe of Italy
September 3, 1943
REGGIO CALABRIA TAKES A LACING
The forward 15" guns of H.M.S. Warspite hurl shells at the Italian mainland clearly seen in the background of the first picture, as the Eighth Army under General Sir Bernard L. Montgomery opened its offensive on the morning of September 3. Prior to the actual invasion of the Italian mainland the British battleships Rodney and Nelson had shelled Axis defense posts along the Calabrian coast and this "softening up" was of great advantage to the British and Canadian troops. Aided by the guns of the Royal Navy and covered by an "umbrella" of Allied war planes, the landings were carried out with a minimum of losses and the invaders pushed north to San Giovanni and thence around to Palmi. In the second picture, Eighth Army Infantry assault troops gather on the Catania quayside awaiting orders to embark in the landing craft that will speed them to Italy and the first step towards the invasion of the continent of Europe.
The Fifth Army heads for the Salerno beachhead
September 9, 1943
NEAR HIT ON ALLIED CONVOY
Allied soldiers of Lieutenant General Mark Clark's Fifth Army heading for the shore of Italy, watch anxiously as high-flying German planes drop bombs around the invasion-bound craft. The defenders used rocket bombs which left a trail of smoke as they descended and exploded immediately upon contact with water. After the landing in the face of enemy gunfire in which the Anglo-American forces suffered tremendous losses, the Fifth Army spread out along a strip thirty miles long from the town of Salerno in the north to Agropoli in the south. Next, the troops began driving inland into the foothills. They penetrated ten miles or more, capturing the town of Altavilla. The big German counter-attack opened on the night of the 13th. Waves of Nazi infantry supported by Tiger tanks swept down from the hills, bent on cutting in two the Allied beachhead and driving it to the shore. Allied forces had to give way; Altavilla was lost. All day Tuesday, the 14th, the battle raged; but the Americans and English would not be driven into the water and by the 17th the tide had turned as the Fifth and Eighth Armies made their juncture and Germany had lost her fight for Southern Italy. In the first picture, General Clark is shown with Admiral H. K. Hewitt, as they went over maps in the chart room of their headquarters ship enroute to Salerno.
Italy's Fleet heads for Malta
September 10, 1943
ITALIAN FLEET SURRENDERS
On the morning of September 11, Admiral Cunningham announced in an official statement that "the Italian battle fleet is now anchored under the guns of Malta." After the representatives of Marshal Badoglio had signed an armistice with the Allies three days previously, units of the Italian fleet left Taranto, Spezia and various other ports and sailed for Malta, where they arrived on September 10, flying the Italian colors and the black pennants which were the agreed marks of identification. Four Italian battleships, six cruisers and seven destroyers arrived at Malta that day; four Italian admirals were with their ships. The convoy was heavily bombed by German Stukas and torpedo-bombers in the straits between Corsica and Sardinia in an attempt to prevent the ships reaching Malta, and before it had been provided with Allied air cover, the battleship "Roma" was sunk by a direct hit which split her in two. Survivors were picked up by other Italian warships. Heavy and accurate Italian A.A. fire soon drove the aircraft off and one was destroyed. A huge crowd including Admiral Cunningham and General Eisenhower watched the Italian Fleet enter Valetta. Messages of congratulation were sent to Admiral Cunningham by King George VI, the Board of Admiralty and General Eisenhower. Admiral Cunningham said: "These ships now added to our strength are first class; and now that the Mediterranean is cleared, it will release many ships for use against the Japanese." Italian submarines kept appearing from various ports and two days after the main Italian fleet had arrived at Malta it was joined by the battleship "Giulio Cesare," which had steamed all the way from Venice to join the Allies. On September 12, seven battleships arrived in the Balearics, five of which were interned for overstaying the twenty-four hours permitted in a neutral port. More arrived in Bone, Algeria. The picture shows the Italian fleet steaming towards the port of Valetta.
Fifth Army strengthens beach-head at Salerno
September, 1943
HEAVY FIGHTING AT SALERNO
For several days the struggle at Salerno continued with unabated violence, the Germans launching one counter-attack after the other in a frantic attempt to prevent the Fifth Army establishing a bridgehead and to drive them back into the sea. On September 12, the Germans launched particularly heavy counter-attacks with large tank forces supported by fierce artillery fire from well-entrenched positions on high ground overlooking the Allied bridgehead. Despite these and yet fiercer attempts to drive the Fifth Army back, however, strong American and British reinforcements of men and equipment were landed on the Salerno beaches and the bridgehead was maintained. By September 16, the battle was going in favor of the Fifth Army, which had now resumed the offensive, and by the end of that day the Germans had begun a withdrawal. Meanwhile the Eighth Army had been making rapid progress from the south-east towards the southern end of the Salerno front, where, on September 17, their armored cars linked up with Fifth Army troops near Agropoli. The Germans now began their general withdrawal north-west towards Naples. First picture, Allied soldiers guarding German prisoners at Salerno; second, British troops coming ashore at Salerno; third, scene on one of the more quiet sections of the beach during landings.
Nazi paratroopers free Mussolini from prison
September, 1943
MUSSOLINI RELEASED BY GERMANS
Since the overthrow of the former Italian dictator on July 24, he had been kept a prisoner in the Gran Sasso Hotel in the Abruzzi Mountains north of Rome. On September 12, Berlin radio announced that German parachutists and armed S.S. men had "Carried out an operation for the liberation of Mussolini." The pictures on these pages show: first, Mussolini leaving the hotel surrounded by the German parachutists who freed him from captivity; second, Mussolini saying good-bye to Hitler before returning to Italy.
Lae falls to the Americans and Australians
September 18, 1943
VICTORY FOR MacARTHUR
Early in September General MacArthur sprang an unpleasant surprise upon the Japanese in New Guinea by suddenly surrounding their main bases at Salamaua and Lae, with the aid of an amphibious expedition and of paratroopers. The Japanese had been building up these bases for nearly twenty months, presumably in preparation for an attack on Australia. General MacArthur's trick worked. On September 14 the Japanese got out of Salamaua and huddled together in Lae. On the 18th it was announced that American and Australian troops had captured Lae. Twenty thousand enemy soldiers were believed to have been in the two towns originally. How many were left alive in the end, no one knows. But the survivors, who made off into the jungle, had little chance of escape, for the Allied troops thought of that eventuality and laid traps for them. The Japanese skittered out of Salamaua in something of a hurry, leaving behind weapons and large stores of supplies. Ragged American and Australian troops, some of whom had fought their way across the mountains and through the jungle, suddenly found themselves walking down the palm-lined street of what once was a pleasant little town, but now was mostly wreckage. A stock of Japanese naval uniforms, fresh and neatly pressed, had survived intact, so the Americans promptly changed out of their tatters into the enemy's finery. This official U.S. Navy photograph, taken after the occupation of Lae, affords a striking demonstration of the power and accuracy of Allied aerial bombardment. A long file of Allied troops passes shattered planes and installations testifying to the "hell on earth" the enemy went through before they were vanquished.
The light that failed
September 18, 1943
BLACKED OUT BY THE ALLIES
One of the victorious Allied soldiers examines a shattered Japanese searchlight, blacked out forever by Allied bombs during the attack on the Japanese stronghold. The Japanese base had been well supplied, but the Allied attack caught the Japanese flat-footed.
Lae, the morning after
September 19, 1943
DEVASTATION ON A PACIFIC ISLAND
Eerie as a scene from Dante's Inferno is this view of a combat photography unit at work in the smoking ruins of Lae the morning after the capture of the Japanese held town. It had been cut to pieces by the heavy Allied bombardment preceding the landing of an amphibious expedition which was the preliminary action to routing the Japanese out of northeastern New Guinea. The clearing out of these enemy nests was a preliminary to an attack on Rabaul.
Aerial incendiaries hit a New Britain airfield
September, 1943
FIRE BOMB
The Army Air Forces are finding the incendiary white phosphorous 100-pound bomb an effective weapon against enemy anti-aircraft positions and parked planes. Upon impact the bomb bursts and scatters particles of burning phosphorous over a wide area. In this picture USAAF white phosphorous bombs burst over a Japanese bomber and fighter plane on Lakunai Airfield in the vicinity of Rabaul, New Britain. These tactics were part of the overall strategy to weaken this base which was of great importance to the Japanese in their attempt to control this area.
The Reds push on by land and air
September 26, 1943
THE OLD AND THE NEW
Less than three months ago, on the fifth of July, the Germans launched a summer offensive in Russia, and the world anxiously waited to see whether the Nazis this time would succeed in smashing the Red Army. On Sunday September 26, Berlin announced the heaviest defeat of the year: Smolensk had been evacuated and all down the Dnieper River the Russians were pressing to the banks of the stream and threatening to pour across into the Nazi strongholds on the west side. In these pictures Soviet cavalry are seen on the march and Red flyers about to take off on a bombing mission.
Blasting Nazi bombers on the Red front
October 2, 1943
HOT RECEPTION FOR THE ENEMY
A Russian anti-aircraft crew keeps their aerial machine gun trained on German bombers that are attempting to blast a Soviet battery. The Soviet soldier at the left appears to be gazing at a near Nazi bomb miss behind the group, while his companions focus their eyes on the action in the sky.
The Fifth army enters Naples
October 1, 1943
A GREAT PORT FALLS
Led by British tanks the Fifth Army entered this southern port on the morning of October 1 to find the harbor full of sunken ships and the city devastated as shown in this picture where row on row of wrecked buildings line the battered railroad tracks and adjacent roadway.
More enemy U-boats and E-boats sunk
October, 1943
ATTACKS BY BRITISH LIGHT CRAFT
On October 10 Mr. Churchill and President Roosevelt stated that "until the third week in September no Allied ship was lost by German U-boat attack." The lull had been broken, however, on September 19 when a pack of about fifteen U-boats attacked a west-bound convoy. There was a running fight lasting four and a half days and three escort vessels were sunk besides a few merchant ships. A large number of submarines were sunk, however, as a result of vigorous surface and air counter-attacks. Increased fighter protection was being used by our convoys and motor gun boats were helping to make their passage even safer. These ships are both fast (being able to attain a speed of 50 m.p.h.) and very heavily armed for their size. These "little ships" scored a notable victory on October 24 when thirty E-boats made an attempt to waylay a convoy in the North sea. They were engaged by M.G.B.s in a running fight which lasted nearly five hours. None of our ships was lost, while four of the enemy were sunk and six damaged. Top, shows the return of M.G.B.'s with German prisoners. Second, shows survivors of the crew of a merchant ship torpedoed by an enemy submarine. The photograph was taken from a United States naval blimp, which dropped a rubber life dinghy seen in the picture. Third, shows a direct hit by a German dive bomber, on an American cargo-carrying ship.
The women of Russian pitch in
October, 1943
ATTEMPT TO BALK THE NAZIS
In the top picture a woman of Rostov aids her men folk in taking up the street car rails in an effort to barricade the city against the Nazis, and in the picture below, women of the Cossack village of Tsymlianskaya, on the southern front carry huge bundles as they return to their former homes, many of which were wrecked during the fierce fighting in the 1943 campaign.
A study in gray on the blue Pacific
October 2, 1943
A BATTLE-WAGON SPEAKS OUT
An overcast sky, mirrored by a leaden sea, forms a fitting background for the grim song voiced by the main batteries of this United States battleship. Clouds of dark gray smoke billow out as the 16-inch guns of this ship of the South Dakota class fires away.
The Americans return to Wake Island
October 5-6, 1943
DESTRUCTION FROM THE AIR
In this striking aerial photograph, the thorough and merciless pounding of Wake Island, once a U.S. stronghold in the Pacific, is clearly revealed during the return appearance of U.S. forces on October 5 and 6, 1943. Silhouetted against the clouds, a Douglas Dauntless dive-bomber from a navy plane carrier task force is poised to begin its plunge on the smoking outpost, releasing another 1,000 lb. bomb to add to the destruction on the Japanese-occupied island which had been held by the foe since December 24, 1941. The raid upon Wake was particularly harassing to the Japanese. Ever since they had wrested it away from the United States Marines, after a sixteen-day fight, the enemy had been strengthening the island as an airplane base.
Another Mediterranean base in Allied hands
October 5, 1943
CORSICA FREED FROM NAZI RULE
Before the Italian Armistice was signed, about 15,000 Corsican patriots were secretly armed by the Allies. On September 8, when news of the Italian surrender was received, there was a general rising. Vichy officials were arrested in almost all towns and villages. There were clashes with Germans troops in the mountains near Sarterne and the enemy was forced to withdraw to Bastia and Boniface. General Giraud broadcast a message to the German High Command in Corsica declaring that anyone wearing a white brassard on his arm embroidered with a Moor's head (part of the arms of Corsica) must be considered as a regular soldier of the French Army and not treated as an armed civilian if captured. By September 21 the western half of Corsica was in French hands. German bases on the island, including the important airfield at Bastia, were heavily bombed by the Allied air forces. The food shortage, already very serious, was further intensified when the Germans set fire to about 1,000 acres of crops and farmsteads. By October 5 the enemy was finally cleared from Corsica. The recapture of Corsica was important not only because it might be used by the enemy as a U-boat base but it gave the Allies an important base for air and amphibious operations. This photograph shows remains of German war material at Bastia in Corsica after the enemy had left the island.
Road-building through the New Guinea jungle
October, 1943
SUCCESSES IN NEW GUINEA
By early October the Japanese were in full retreat up the Ramu Valley in the north of New Guinea. Allied control of the air bases in this area constituted a further threat to Japanese sea communications with the important base of Rabaul, which was being continually harassed by the Allies from the air. First, troops supervised by military engineers harnessing a river along which a new road is being built; second, a bridge is being built in the South Pacific while a machine gunner keeps watch for Japanese patrols and snipers.
Success in the war against U-boats
October 15, 1943
NAVY FLYERS BAG THREE SUBMARINES
In the first picture, the injured officer of a Nazi submarine comes aboard the escort carrier from which the nemesis of his vessel took off, while at the second, the commanding officer of the submarine chats with officers of the carrier, and in the third picture, German prisoners march along behind their captain to a prisoner of war camp on the Atlantic seaboard. Flying their Grumman Avenger torpedo bomber from the flight deck of one of the Navy's escort carriers, the crew depth-bombed three Nazi submarines in four days in the battle to keep the Atlantic open. How well the Allies were succeeding in this fight was revealed in a joint statement by President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill revealing that "in the first six months of 1943 the number of ships sunk per U-boat operating was only half that in the last six months of 1942 and only a quarter of that in the first half of 1942."
A ruin of bombs falls on France
October 15, 1943
BAD NEWS FOR THE NAZIS
Twenty-six 100-lb bombs are seen in mid-air just after being released from a B-26 Marauder medium bomber of the U.S. Army 9th Air Force. They're headed for a Nazi installation in France. Night after night the Nazi controlled territory was subjected to terrific bombings by planes of the American and Royal Air Forces in an effort to soften up the country and the enemy troops in preparation for the forthcoming invasion. In addition to defense posts, heavy damage was inflicted upon the enemy airplane factories throughout the occupied countries and Germany.
Two-way traffic at Salerno
October, 1943
ON THE BEACHHEAD
U.S. Troops (center) march over a landing mat road on the beach at Salerno as a wounded G. I. is carried on a litter toward the shore for evacuation to a base hospital. The fighting was very bloody in this area but the courage and determination of the men of the 5th Army, who stood up under the fiercest fighting of the entire Tunisia-Sicily-Italy campaign, prevailed and the tide of battle eventually turned, aided by the brilliant march of the British 8th Army up the east coast which kept the Nazis busy on both ends of the battle line.
The Russians push on by land and air
October, 1943
RUSSIAN GUNS IN ACTION
In this picture a Russian gun shells the retreating Germans in the Dnieper River area as the Red Army's Fall offensive to free their homeland gained momentum.
DOWNED OVER BERLIN
An armed German soldier stands guard over the wreckage of a bomber of the Soviet Air Force which was brought down during a raid over the German capital.
The British enter Cancello
October 18, 1943
A STRONGHOLD FALLS TO THE ALLIES
Bending low and with their guns held ready for instant use, British infantrymen dash across a blasted railway bridge over the Volturno river to enter Cancello, while in the bottom picture an Italian cyclist nonchalently hitches onto the back of a British 25-pounder as the mobile column passes a group of refugees returning from the hills to their homes.
A visit to an Italian home
October, 1943
CAUTIOUS TOMMIES
Two British members of a patrol of the Fifth Army investigate suspicious movements in a deserted house in Cancello the day after the fall of the Italian town. The wiping out of Axis nests of snipers in the occupied towns slowed up the advance of the Allies. The Nazis employed snipers lavishly in all rearguard operations.
Obstacle race in Sicily
October, 1943
NAZI SLOW-UP FAILS
Fleeing from Sicily, Fascist troops on the run turned the Allied advance into an obstacle race as they left demolished roads and bridges in their wake. Here, Americans of the Third Division tug and push a motorcycle over what's left of a narrow mountain road east of Agijosa on the northern coast of Sicily as the Allies attempted to create order out of chaos on this island.
The Nazis leave destruction in their wake
October 26, 1943
AFTER THE NAZIS HAD FLED
In the picture above a metal works in Dniepropetrovsk was demolished by the fleeing Nazis, and in the picture below, the railway bridge across the Dnieper in the Soviet city was demolished by the Germans. In addition to this damage the famous Dnieper Dam, one of the proudest feats of the New Russia, five miles north of Zaporozhe, was dynamited by the Nazis, but on October 13 Soviet troops drove the enemy out of Zaporozhe and once more stood guard over the dam which was erected by American engineers at a cost of $110,000,000.
The natives get acquainted with the Yanks
October, 1943
SOMETHING NEW HAS BEEN ADDED
In the first picture, these native girls on a South Pacific island have learned to play cassino. They are playing the game here, quite adeptly, with a United States soldier, while an army officer "kibitzes." In the second picture, one of Merrill's Marauders shows a native child how to enjoy American chewing gum during a rest period of the outfit's march in the Burma campaign. In all sectors the Americans clicked with the natives who were happy to have the yoke of the Japanese dropped from their shoulders and in its place accept the good-fellowship and friendship of the Allied armies.
As the Eighth Army moved ahead
October, 1943
SCENES OF DEVASTATION
In the top picture, dust that was once buildings fills the air in the square of Torre Annunziata, passed through by British tanks on their way up the coast. Two civilians who were in the midst of the furious warfare stoically sit in their donkey cart surrounded by mechanized equipment of Montgomery's men, while in the picture below, British infantrymen take cover along a river in Scafati, near Pompeii as they await their chance to silence a nest of Nazi snipers who had been posted by the retreating enemy.
"General Goo" slows the British in Italy
October, 1943
SLOWED UP BY THE ELEMENTS
These two photographs show clearly one reason why the Allied forces in Italy were slowed up in the early days of their drive against the Germans in Italy. In the top photograph men of the R.A.F. push a "Spitfire" out of heavy mud caused by the heavy rains, while in the bottom picture men of the British Eighth Army try to figure out how they can drag a mired 25-pounder out of the ooze.
Dniepropetrovsk liberated
October 26, 1943
REDS CHASE NAZIS
The Red Army was moving in giant strides across the flatlands of Southern Russia and the Nazis fled for their lives. The Berlin radio, franker than usual, called it "a large German withdrawal movement." The Russians had mastery of the sky and the Germans could find no shelter from the Soviet planes. The Red Army was advancing 12 to 15 miles a day and on the 26th the Dniepropetrovsk (shown in this aerial view) was liberated. The Germans left behind much war material, Moscow reporting the capture of 425 railroad cars loaded with ammunition.
Italian prisoners of war in America
October 30, 1943
FAR FROM THE NOISE OF BATTLE
The Geneva Convention of 1929 established specific rules and regulations regarding the treatment of prisoners of war and the Allies lived up to the letter of the law in treatment of their captives. Early in 1943 a series of prisoner of war camps was set up in the United States and Italians and Germans started to arrive in this country. Each day the enlisted personnel among the prisoners were assigned various duties by their own leader, usually a non-commissioned officer, as shown in the picture at top, where a leader is giving out the day's assignments, while, at the end of day, as shown in the bottom picture, they relax in their recreation rooms.
The attack on Mono
October 27, 1943
THUNDER AT DAWN
In the picture at top destroyers of the United States Pacific fleet shell the defenses of this Treasury Island on the southern flank of Bougainville. The objective was to soften the enemy held "stepping stone" for the combined American-New Zealand forces to establish a beachhead as shown in the picture below. Here, on an islet he had never heard of, a soldier pays the price of freedom. Guns ready, his comrades search for the enemy pill-box from whence the deadly fire came.
Another step toward Tokio—Mono Island seized
October 27, 1943
A STEP ON THE LONG ROAD TO VICTORY
The seizure of Mono Island in the Treasury group, Central Solomons, on October 27, was typical of the amphibious campaigns which were moving the Allies step by step toward their final goal. Backed by long planning, the Mono victory was small in size, big in import, a demonstration that when Japanese forces are small and ill-prepared, the Allies could move with the same terrorizing speed as the Japanese once did. The landing was made in daylight after a terrific bombardment by United States destroyers. Within fourteen hours the Allied forces—Americans and New Zealanders—had killed or captured the majority of the 200 to 300 Japanese. When the action ended the Rising Sun had slid back again in the long ebb toward Tokio. In this picture, New Zealanders, forming the second wave, come in as fog begins to veil the shores of Mono. The LCP's are run far up on the rocky shore as the men hasten to get supplies debarked. Meanwhile parachutists descended on nearby Choiseul. Both islands are on the southern flank of the much larger Bougainville, which was the last stronghold left to the enemy in the Solomons.
Secretary Hull in Moscow
November 1, 1943
VICTORY AT MOSCOW
At long last Russia, Britain and the United States joined hands as a team to finish off the Nazis and plan the peace. This was the significance of the Moscow agreement reached at the Molotov-Eden-Hull conference the last two weeks in October and this was the reason why the Allied world rejoiced as though at a decisive victory. The agreement officially ended a quarter-century smoldering distrust between Russia and the western powers, dating back to the days after the last war when Allied troops invaded Russia to combat the new Bolshevism and flared up in 1938 when Russia was excluded from the Munich conference and again in 1939 when Stalin signed "a scrap of paper" with Hitler. The first picture, signing the pact which wiped out all the major suspicions, are, left to right, Fu-Ping-sheung, Chinese Ambassador, Secretary of State Cordell Hull; V. M. Molotov, Soviet commisar of Foreign Affairs and Anthony Eden, British minister of Foreign Affairs. In the second picture, Secretary Hull is shown as he was greeted in Moscow by Mr. Molotov and an honor guard of picked Russian troops.
Kiev reconquered—the Crimea is invaded
November 7, 1943
CELEBRATION IN MOSCOW
The pyrotechnic display in the Soviet capital in honor of the Soviet forces which liberated Kiev, capital of the Ukraine and third city of the Soviet Union, is shown in picture at top, and below, Red infantrymen hunt out the beaten Nazis in the ruins of buildings in the city. Meanwhile, 300 miles southeast, the Red Army closed a trap on 90,000 Germans in Crimea.
Strange sights for an ancient town
November, 1943
OFFICIAL SECOND-STORY MEN
These complex, century-old rooftops in Italy add to the difficulties of the work of 8th Army signallers, who only a few months ago were laying their lines in the desert where the problems were of a different nature. Here these men are shown climbing the rooftops at dawn in a newly conquered Italian town. The work of maintaining lines of communications was extremely important and sometimes hazardous.
Mussolini falls in the debris
November, 1943
CRASHES WITH HIS EMPIRE
A large photograph of Mussolini lies in the foreground as the citizens of Eboli clear away the debris and wreckage after the Allies had entered this Italian town in November during the joint advance on the road to Rome and ultimate victory.
The Battle of Tarawa
November 20, 1943
PACIFIC ISLANDS WON
The Gilbert Islands are small dots in the midst of a vast sea, 2,400 miles southwest of Hawaii, 3,000 miles southeast of Tokio. Toward them, on the morning of November 20, moved the mightiest naval force ever assembled in the Pacific. In that force were battleships which had been torn apart by the Japanese bombs in the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor two years ago; now the battleships were better than ever, for they not only had been repaired, but modernized as well. In the armada were more aircraft carriers than ever had sailed together on any sea, most of them built since Pearl Harbor. The fleet was a symbol of reborn American naval power. From landing ships men poured out onto the beaches of three of the Gilbert Atolls—men of the 2nd Marine Division, veterans of Guadalcanal and men of New York's old Fighting 69th of World War I fame, now seeing service in this war for the first time as members of the 27th Division. Some 4,000 Japanese were guarding the three islands—Tarawa, Makin and Abemama—but within four days Admiral Nimitz was able to announce that the Gilbert Islands had been conquered. Most of the enemy defenders had been killed; a few remained to be hunted down. American losses on Tarawa, where the Marines landed were heavy. Of two battalions—2,000 to 3,000 men —only a few hundred escaped death or injury. The rapidity of the victory was almost startling. It took American troops three weeks to conquer half as many Japanese on Attu in the Aleutians. In this picture direct hits by the 5-inch guns of the destroyer force off Tarawa set off the oil dumps on the Japanese-held island, causing this heavy cloud of black smoke. In the foreground Marines take cover amid wrecked Japanese equipment.
Victory at Tarawa
November 24, 1943
AT HEAVY COST
For concentrated fighting and high casualties, few battles in American history can approach Tarawa. Here, units of Marines, haggard, smoke-blackened and battle-worn, assemble on Tarawa for evacuation. Only a few hundred of the thousands who hit the beach escaped death or wounds in the bitter struggle for this critical atoll.
The chiefs watch the advance on Tarawa
November 20, 1943
AS THE GUNS BLASTED TARAWA
The leaders of the attack tensely watch the action ashore from the bridge of a United States warship. Major General Julian C. Smith, marine commander, Rear Admiral Harry W. Hill, faces the camera in the background. In the picture below, Marines dash across the beach on Tarawa to take the airport there. One of the marines carries a shovel to dig a fox hole.
Where the Marines go their pin-ups go
November 21, 1943
GOOD LUCK CHARM
As a landing barge approaches the Japanese-held island in the Gilberts a Marine takes a last look at his good-luck picture, a pin-up girl. Tarawa burns in the background from the terrific bombardment laid down by units of the United States fleet. Pin-up girls had become a great morale holder-up in this World War and everything from comics to famous models and movie stars were welcomed by the boys.
The Marines have landed
November 21, 1943
COMING ASHORE AT TARAWA
Despite enemy fire from the Japanese controlled island, these marines of the 2nd division waded through the surf off Tarawa. Landing boats and barges brought them to within 500 yards of the beach, but the coral bottom prevented the boats coming any closer to the shore. In the picture below, taken after the landing, a squad leader points out the spot where the Japanese were firing from and the Marines edging forward opened fire on the foe and "got them."
The situation is well in hand
November 21, 1943
THEY WEREN'T FOOLING
When these Marines went over the top from the beach on Tarawa Island they knew they were going to have a fight on their hands, but they just set their jaws—as picture at top shows—and charged. In the bottom picture the Marine standing over the pack howitzer (center) is wearing a helmet with two holes in it. The hole in the side was made as a bullet entered and the one in front as it left. The smoke is caused by the powder from their own gun.
A touch of home in the Pacific
November, 1943
DOG ATTENDS PRESS CONFERENCE
When Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, commander-in-chief, United States Pacific Fleet, held a press conference at his Pearl Harbor headquarters, November 29, 1943, his schnauzer pup "Makalapa" sat quietly throughout, under the desk at the admiral's feet. It was at this press conference that Admiral Nimitz told of the successes by our forces routing the Japanese in the Gilbert Islands. Captain P. V. Mercer, Admiral Nimitz's aide and assistant chief of staff is at his left.
The conference in Cairo
November 23, 1943
HEADS OF THREE POWERS MEET
Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill are shown as they met in Cairo during the last week of November to plan the ultimate offensives against the Axis and to decide what to do with Germany and Japan when they were crushed. The President and the Prime Minister never met the Generalissimo until they shook hands in Cairo. There the three men, accompanied by three hundred top war leaders of the three nations, reshaped the future of the Orient. One of the largest empires ever put together was doomed at the conference. In the last half century Japan had brought under its domination a large portion of the human race, inhabiting lands 3,000,000 square miles in extent. The leaders of the three allies pledged their three nations to strip away these conquests and drive the Nipponese back into their home islands. When the pledge is fulfilled after "serious and prolonged operation," Japan will be no larger than California. Instead of being a world conqueror, Japan will be reduced to the status of a third-rate power. Her ability to make war would be wiped out automatically; she would lose the indispensable raw materials acquired from Manchuria and the South Seas; she would lose the island bases necessary to give her fleet long-range striking power. The Generalissimo, who speaks only a little English, brought his wife to be his interpreter and advisor, and she was the only woman in the inner circle of the conference. As for China, itself, the Cairo conference came as a life-giving tonic. Now China, for the first time since medieval days, was formally recognized as one of the great powers of the world, in status of full equality. She would be freed from Japan's armed tutelage, and presumably from Occidental pressure as well. The Cairo conference came at a time when the restoration of morale was badly needed in China. The long hard war against the Japanese had brought the nation to the point of exhaustion, and the United Nations policy of winning the war in Europe first had made it impossible for China to get the relief she needed. National morale was at low ebb in China, and it was felt that the meeting might serve to stimulate it.
Interlude in the Cairo conference
November 23, 1943
THE CHIANGS VISIT THE PYRAMIDS
During the Cairo Tripartite conference, Generalissimo and Madame Chiang Kai-shek toured the Pyramid area. Here Madame Chiang is shown as she substituted a British jeep for the national camel. The Generalissimo, who speaks only a little English, brought his wife along to the Cairo conference to be his interpreter and advisor, and she was the only woman in the inner circle of the conference. However, on a visit to the Pyramids, they listened in comparative silence as Hadji-Ali No. 1, the Arab dragoman, or guide, gave his lecture on the antiquities of the No. l Wonder of the World, which includes especially the pyramid of Cheops and the Sphinx. In the picture below: Generalissimo, in his black robe, at the head of the procession; on the far left is Major General Chennault; the American officer in the khaki shirt shown at the right is Major General Ralph Royce.
Germans on the Pripet Marshes
November 27, 1943
FIGHTING ON THE PRIPET MARSHES
On November 27 there was heavy fighting on a 100-mile front over the Pripet Marshes. The Germans, trying to retreat towards Poland, were much hampered by the nature of the country. They were forced to build wooden tracks over which light loads could be pulled in horse-drawn vehicles. Top, a flooded highway over the Pripet Marshes with wrecked vehicles lining roadside. Below, German transport column of horse-drawn wagons crosses Pripet Marshes over to the crudest kind of an impromptu wooden track.
Reshaping the destiny of Europe—Teheran
November 28, 1943
PLANNING ALLIED STRATEGY
After the Cairo Conference ended, the American and British delegates moved eastward to Teheran, capital of Iran. There, for the first time, President Roosevelt met Premier Stalin, and the meeting between these two, Winston Churchill and the diplomatic and military staffs proved to be one of the most important conferences in history. During the meeting and after it, very little information regarding the discussions was released to the press. A few statements of a general nature declaring that all parties were in accord were given out. But in the following summer, when American and British forces invaded France, it was made clear that the planning had been done at Terheran, a full half-year previously. The Teheran session was particularly important when the background of the relations between America, Britain and Russia is examined. For two years the Russians had been bearing the brunt of the fighting on the continent. They were eager for their allies to open a second front in the west in order that pressure in the east would be eased. The reluctance of the Americans and British to do this until they were fully prepared, and the consequent delay gave rise to stories of dissension between the three powers. At Teheran, these difficulties were ironed out and the time and place for the blow in France decided upon. In the foreground of this picture, from left to right, are Premier Stalin, President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill. In the background Harry Hopkins stands behind Stalin; V. M. Molotov, Russia's foreign minister, is between Stalin and Roosevelt; Anthony Eden, Britain's foreign secretary, stands beside his chief.
The Pacific story
November, 1943
SHRINKING THE JAPANESE HORIZON
After nearly two years of warfare, American strength begins to make itself felt. While the shaded area of this map indicates the vast area still under Japanese control, the American flag is flying in many new places. The gains in New Guinea are particularly important. One year ago the Japanese were threatening Port Moresby and were barely stopped in the Owen Stanley mountains by American and Australian forces. At this date the danger to Port Moresby has been definitely removed and the Japanese have lost their two important bases of Lae and Salamaua. The Allies are moving northeast along the coast and are now within bombing range of Rabaul, the Japanese bastion on New Britain. In the Solomons the Americans have progressed from their hard won beachheads on Guadalcanal and Tulagi to Bougainville in the north. In the Gilbert Islands American fighting men have done something more than recapture enemy invaded territory. The Gilbert Islands had been strongly fortified by the Japanese who regarded it as one of the outer defenses of Truk, their most important base in the south Pacific. Its seizure by the Americans was a most important move in any plan of strategy that included either the taking or the neutralization of Truk. Chiefly responsible for American successes in the Pacific was a greatly strengthened navy. By November, 1943, the United States fleet had completely recovered from the Pearl Harbor disaster. Those battleships which had been resting on the mud of the harbor had been raised and modernized, and were now operating in both the Atlantic and Pacific. In addition new ships of all types were now going into action as the navy's prodigious building program began to show results.
Marines ambushed by Japanese on Bougainville
November, 1943
HEROIC ACTION IN THE PACIFIC
When Marine infantrymen were stopped at this spot—the junction of the Piva and Numa-Numa Trails—on Bougainville Island in the Solomons, tanks were rushed to the scene. The tank in the first picture carried the unit commander, First Lieutenant Leon A. Stanley of Anniston, Alabama. A Marine killed by the foe was left in the roadway and as the tank approached the body it struck a jungle vine which was stretched across the road and set off a land-mine. The tank was disabled and the crew, armed with sub-machine guns, climbed out to get the enemy. Lieutenant Stanley was killed early in the action. The crew kept fighting and were joined by Private 1cl. Robert E. Lansley of Syracuse, N. Y., second from left, a Marine raider and his specially trained dog, "Andy." The dog located machine gun nests on either side of the road and here Lansley is seen drawing the Japanese fire so the Marines could determine if the guns were firing from fixed positions or were firing free. Three times Lansley drew their fire before it was determined that the Japanese were firing from fixed positions. In the second picture two Marines are covering Lansley and firing on the enemy behind the tank, driving them around the right end where Private Lansley picked them off. One of the Marines killed in the action is at the extreme left (only his legs showing.) In the third picture Lansley runs back up Death-Alley to escape the bullets cracking around him as other Marines hold their fire until he reaches safety. In the fourth picture four Marines give first aid to one of their buddies as Private Lansley continues his search for the enemy. Shortly after this picture was taken the wounded man was removed and the Marines took over the enemy positions. While examining the machine guns and other equipment, a Japanese, hidden in a dugout which they had overlooked, threw a hand grenade. Lansley and his buddy, Private 1cl. John V. Mahoney of Clinton, Conn., were wounded as were four other Marines in the group. Despite his wounds Lansley turned his machine gun on the sniper and killed him.
Bitter fighting centers around Chinese city
December, 1943
RECAPTURE OF CHANGTEH
On November 25, the Japanese, making considerable use of paratroops, had captured and taken possession of the city of Changteh, important as the centre of the rice-producing district. On November 27, a very heavy counter-attack was launched and over 5,000 of the enemy were killed. The Chinese had succeeded in cutting off all communications excepting one over Lake Tungting and another by trail skirting the lake's western shores. It was alleged that the enemy were making use of poison-gas shells. On November 30, bitter hand-to-hand fighting was taking place in the streets of the city. By December 1, the Chinese forces under General Yu Cheng-Wan supported by American aircraft drove the enemy entirely from the city. The Japanese retreated to a point two miles north. By December 3, the city had again fallen into the hands of the Japanese. Less than 300 men of the Chinese 57th Division survived. On December 9, the city changed hands yet again, and General Hseuh Yeuk stated that the Chinese had suffered very heavily in the action, their losses far exceeding those of the enemy. But the importance of the city was such that it was felt it must be retaken at all costs. The picture shows Chinese refugees re-entering Changteh.
Interlude at Teheran
December 1, 1943
THE COMMANDER IN CHIEF HONORS THE ALLIED COMMANDER
President Franklin D. Roosevelt is shown as he awarded the Legion of Merit to General Dwight D. Eisenhower during the general's visit to the conference of Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin. The ceremony took place in the garden of the Russian Embassy at Teheran where the Allied conference was held, and it was during the sessions at Teheran and Cairo that General Eisenhower was made Allied Commander-in-chief.
Tito and his Partisans
December, 1943
FIGHTING THE NAZI INVADERS
Marshal Tito, leader of the Partisan forces fighting the invaders of Yugoslavia, is shown in the top picture with his favorite pet, a German police dog, while in pictures below, at the left, a patrol of the Marshal's forces crosses a wooden bridge below a waterfall, on their way to fight the enemy. In the picture below, right, a Partisan supply column, passes through a Bosnian village with supplies for the patriots. Tito's early operations were of the guerrilla variety, a strategy which was imposed upon him because of his lack of supplies and arms. Later, when he had organized his men and had begun to receive munitions by air from the Americans and British, his legions became an organized army. His tactics in harassing the Nazis in Yugoslavia were so successful that they were forced to keep several divisions, badly needed elsewhere, occupied in keeping him under control. Tito's forces were frequently in combat with the men of Mihailovitch who, for reasons not yet made clear, had fallen from grace with the Allies who formerly supported him.
A new handicap for the Nazis to overcome
December 13, 1943
BUCKING THEIR CONQUERORS
In Yugoslavia, General Tito's Partisans had been fighting ever since the fall of Mussolini to keep the road open for the flank invasion across the Adriatic which they felt sure was coming. The Germans, thinking maybe they were right, sent large reinforcements under Marshal Rommel to suppress the Guerrillas. In the first part of December they had succeeded in driving them back into the mountains. In this picture Nazi soldiers are searching captured guerrillas.
War inside "Fortress Europe"
December, 1943
DIVISION IN YUGOSLAVIA
While General Tito's Partisans were fighting the Nazis, General Mihailovitch, foreign minister of the Yugoslav Government-in-exile, headed a rival, but less active guerrilla organization. King Peter was most unhappy about the situation and issued a bitter statement denouncing Tito's Partisans. Mihailovitch was accused by neutral observers of attacking the Partisans instead of the Nazis. In this picture German troops seek out Partisans in the Bosnia region.
Waves out work in the war effort
December, 1943
WOMEN'S RESERVE OF THE NAVY
For the first time since 1918 women were enrolled in the United States Navy when congress authorized the movement in 1942. Here an aviation machinist's mate, third class, a skilled ground crew mechanic, overhauls a Grumman Avenger plane at Floyd Bennet Field, N. Y., while in the picture below, two seamen second class are opaquing and stripping negatives.
Scharnhorst sunk in Arctic
December 26, 1943
DESTRUCTION OF THE SCHARNHORST
On December 26 the German battleship Schornhorst attempted to attack a Russia-bound convoy but was engaged by units of the Home Fleet. The Scharnhorst was seen in the twilight of an Arctic morning south-east of Bear Island sailing in the direction of the convoy. She was attacked by H.M.S. Norfolk and steamed off at full speed. A few hours later she again attempted to intercept the convoy but was driven off to the Norwegian coast. All that afternoon she was followed by cruisers and destroyers and her position reported to H.M.S. Duke of York. Towards afternoon the Duke of York contacted the enemy and scored a direct hit below her waterline which greatly reduced her speed. In spite of this, she evaded the Duke of York. The destroyers H.M.H. Savage, H.M.S. Saumarez, H.M.S. Scorpion and the Norwegian destroyer Stord followed her and, unsupported, attacked her with torpedoes. Shortly afterwards, four other destroyers closed in and scored torpedo hits which so reduced the speed of the Scharnhorst that the Duke of York was able to close in. The Scharnhorst attempted to escape by altering her course, but was unable to evade the Duke of York which hammered her with her 14-in guns and turned her into a burning wreck. The H.M.S. Jamaica then sank the Scharnhorst by torpedo. The second picture shows the Scharnhorst; the first picture is the map of battle.
Berlin is a marked city
December 16, 1943
RAZING THE NAZI CAPITAL
On December 16 British planes, after dark and after thirteen nights of respite, dropped more than 1,500 tons of bombs on Berlin, plus many thousands of other explosives and incendiaries. Thirty bombers were lost in the attack. Before that, in the daylight, American planes attacked the German port of Emden. It was Berlin's 96th air attack since the opening of the war, and as shown in this picture, taken over the factory district, the bombs were finding their mark,
The WACs are on their way
December, 1943
"AND THEY WON'T BE BACK
'TIL IT'S OVER, OVER THERE"
In the picture at top, members of the women's auxiliary corps, United States Army, are shown embarking for an overseas post, while below, a WAC sergeant and two of her colleagues take over a jeep. The corps, entirely a volunteer organization, functions for the purpose of replacing men who can then be assigned to combat duty. Women are entitled to same rank and pay as men. The WAC's became a force of 90,000 strong.
The distaff side in the American war effort
December, 1943
MARINES AT WORK
Girl Marines who have completed their "boot" training at the U.S. Naval Reserve Training School, Hunter College, N. Y., are shown in the picture above, relieving a man for combat duty as they work on the files at Camp LeJeune, N. C., while in the bottom picture one of the "Devil Dogs" gets a lesson in "logging in" a plane at the Marine base. Women Marines hold the same jobs, title and pay as men Marines. They have no nickname and are not an auxiliary. In the months to come they built a force of nearly 19,000 and were to win the respect and confidence of their colleagues in arms.
Nazis pushed back into Poland
January 3, 1944
RED VICTORY
In pushing the Nazis across the border into pre-war Poland, the Red Army in one year had thrust the German Army back 775 miles from Stalingrad, or approximately the distance from New York to Chicago. Six hundred miles farther to the west lay Berlin. Here, as the great Soviet winter offensive got under way, red army tankborne troops (in their winter whites) are given the signal to advance, and before another month had passed this drive was to carry them across the border of Estonia.
A new type of warfare hits England
January 5, 1,944
GERMAN SECRET WEAPON
The people of a London suburb on a January morning found the air filled with a strange, terrifying noise like the whistling of a giant kettle. Some thinking it was a heavy bomb, scurried to shelter; others looked up and caught a glimpse of a new kind of propellerless plane. As the aerial visitor repeated its scooting across the sky the people came to know it and called it "The Squirt." Above is a provisional sectional drawing of the jet-propelled pilotless miniature plane which the Nazis were to direct against England with such great success. The three drawings at right show a head-on, bottom and side view of the vaunted German secret weapon. Wing span of the rocket plane is 16 feet, its length 25 feet, 4-1/2 inches. Section marked X in the bottom drawing shows the propulsion unit.
Ringside view of war
January, 1944
BATTLE FOR ORTONA
Here's a ringside view of the furious street fighting that characterized the battle for and capture of Ortona by Canadian troops of the British Eighth Army. Above, left, a protesting, wounded tank man is led from the scene by a medical corpsman, while another mercy worker looks on. Above, right, a casualty gets first aid on the debris-strewn sidewalk as German snipers keep up a steady fire. Below, a Canadian crew sends a General Sherman tank crashing through the streets of Ortona.
Ceremony before the battle
January 3, 1944
NEW YEAR CEREMONY ON THE PLAINS
Mohammedan troops from French Morocco, a unit of the Fifth Army, are shown observing their Ait Kebir, or Great Feast, a solemn religious ceremony which marks the arrival of the New Year. (It is now 1364 on their calendar.) In Morocco it is the custom during the feast that every married man kill a sheep, which is then roasted whole and eaten. Here, Major Jacques Allard, left, commandant of the French Regiment, puts his "seal of approval" on the feast by tasting one of the roasted sheep, a necessary part of this religious rite.
Ciano and De Bono reported executed
January 11, 1944
PLOTTED MUSSOLINI'S OVERTHROW
Count Galeazzo Ciano, former Italian foreign minister and son-in-law of Benito Mussolini, was reported by Germany's news agency, D.N.B., to have been executed. Marshal Emilio de Bono and sixteen other members of the former Grand Fascist Council met death with him before a firing squad outside the walls of Salvio Prison in Verona, Italy. Ciano and de Bono were accused of treason by the Special Fascist Tribunal. The specific charge was conspiring to oust Mussolini on July 24, 1943. At one time Ciano was one of the most important figures in international diplomacy, having figured prominently in all of Italy's major negotiations, including the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Pact. De Bono led the military campaigns in Eritrea and Ethiopia. Ciano above, De Bono below.
In the bright of a full moon
January 4, 1944
NIGHT AND THE SHELLS ARE FALLING
This is an Italian battle scene, photographed in the bright of a full moon, and probably the first of its kind to be photographed. Peaceful Lagone, nestled in the hills and in the path of the Fifth Army advance, containing a unit of the German winter line in Southern Italy, is shelled by American artillery. Brilliant lighting from bursting shells light up the buildings, to the rear and left Nazi positions are also being shelled by the Americans who trained at the School of Fire at Forts Bragg and Sill. The use of Artillery was to play a big role in the Allied drive through Italy.
American ingenuity
January 20, 1944
OUTWITTING THE NAZIS
A little thing like a capsized ship doesn't stand in the way of the U.S. Army engineers. Here, in Naples Harbor they have outwitted the Nazis and turned a deficit into an asset by transforming an overturned ship into a pier. Nazi demolition experts who sank numerous ships in the harbor at Naples, like this one, did not count on the ingenuity of the Engineers. The ship's superstructure, digging into the harbor bottom, steadies the hull. All five hatches of a Liberty ship can be unloaded at once alongside this improvised pier. All during the campaign through Italy the Allies came across numerous scenes of destruction like the one pictured here, designed to slow up the Allied march to victory in the former Mussolini stronghold.
Invasion armada heads for Anzio
January 22, 1944
THE BATTLE FOR ROME IS ON IN EARNEST
This picture was taken as the huge Allied invasion fleet headed toward beachheads in the Nettuno-Anzio sector for the drive on Rome. Barrage balloons soar above the ship at the left, an LST (Landing ship, tanks) while in the center and right background the sea is covered with invasion craft of various types, and the Allies had resumed their fight to rescue the Eternal City from her Germanic conquerors. The first phase of the maneuver actually started on January 17 when Canadian troops on the east coast of Italy launched an attack toward Pescara. About the same hour the British near the west coast stormed across the Garigliano River. Soon afterward the Americans succeeded in establishing two bridgeheads across the Rapido River. These they later lost but the purpose had been served. Meanwhile, Allied planes had bombed out the three railways leading down to Rome from the north, so passage of troops and supplies by the enemy was temporarily blocked. On Friday (the 21st) bombers knocked out the German headquarters for the Rome area and early on Saturday morning the Allied floating army landed some thirty-five miles south of Rome in the neighboring harbor at Nettuno. For some weeks the issue was in doubt, but by the end of February the landings were fully established and the Allies were on the road to Rome.
Sailing along on the road to Rome
January 22, 1944
THE SEA LEADS TO THE APPIAN WAY
An American soldier is silhouetted against a stretch of water covered as far as the eye can see with craft of the Allied invasion fleet bound for the beachheads in the Nettuno-Anzio area. The Allied troops had been prepared for a deadly battle on the beach, but to their astonishment there was no opposition. Their surprise was nothing to that of the few Germans who had been left to garrison the area, and it was not until four days later that units of two German Divisions arrived to launch counter-attacks against both flanks of the Allied position. On the right flank the attacks were in the neighborhood of Littoria; on the left flank the enemy struck near Carroceto.
The Anzio beachhead is established
January 22, 1944
A LANDING IS MADE AT NETTUNO
Waterfront hotels bring no thoughts of a happy holiday to these Americans landing at Nettuno. The Fifth Army troops charging ashore south of Rome wonder if the one-time exclusive playground houses hidden Nazis. In the bottom picture a mobile crane is unloading material from one of the landing craft which helped engineer the successful amphibious end run. Four days later Marshal Kesselring was able to launch a counter-offensive with his Axis forces.
The Allies come ashore at Anzio-Nettuno
January 22, 1944
A BEACHHEAD IS ESTABLISHED
In the picture at top, "Ducks" loaded with infantrymen swarm ashore in the Anzio-Nettuno sector and, below, other American soldiers who participated in the invasion south of Rome, move their equipment along the beach at Nettuno. The first stages of the battle of Anzio passed off without a hitch, but the trouble came later when the Germans were able to throw in reserves.
Moving ahead by land and by sea
January 23, 1944
THE GERMANS FEEL OUR STRENGTH
In the picture at top, Landing craft, including "ducks" head for the beachhead at Anzio, while in the picture below, big British self-propelled guns move into firing position somewhere on the Rome beachhead. These heavy weapons were used to good advantage at Anzio.
King Winter hits the Italian front
January, 1944
COLD, TOUGH GOING
A long line of mules, loaded with supplies, plods through the snow headed for the advanced British front in Italy. Note the range of mountains in the background which gives an idea of the tough terrain through which the Allies were fighting in the long, dark days of the Italian winter which kept planes on the ground, slowed up the mechanized units and held the allied advance in many sectors to a mere three or four miles a week. This heavy weather also held back the attacks on Hitler's Balkan holdings until a slight break in the weather came around the 15th of January, allowing Italian-based bombers to renew their day and night attacks on Sofia, capital of Bulgaria. The rugged terrain and the snow and rain proved a combination that the Allies could not beat and caused a virtual stalemate during the winter months.
As the Russian Army rolled on
January, 1944
RED SHARPSHOOTERS ON THE JOB
In their drive to recover Nazi-captured territory, the Soviet Army made a town-by-town successful offensive. In this picture crack riflemen of the Russian Army man their automatic rifles to dislodge a body of enemy forces from another populated place as the Russian troops entered the historic central corridor into the European heartland. On their right, protecting them against large-scale counter attack, was the natural barrier of the great Pripet marshes. On their left, the natural fortresses of the Carpathian mountains. By entering this geographic highway the Red Army in effect cut the battlefront in two parts; a 500 mile front from the Pripet Marshes to Leningrad and a 400 mile southern front from the marshes to the Black Sea.
Street fighting in Ortona
January, 1944
CANADIANS ON THE ADVANCE
Some of these Canadian infantrymen must feel as though they are being stood against that battered wall in Ortona for execution, for from any window across the road might come a stream of enemy bullets. These members of the Western Canadian Infantry are literally stalking the enemy who has posted snipers in the battered dwellings. While the capture of Ortona was officially announced on December 30, the fighting in this region continued for some weeks.
Italy—four months after the initial landing
January 22, 1944
THE ALLIES ARE ON THE ROAD TO ROME
This map shows the lines of battle as they appeared at four different periods up to and including the landing at Anzio and shows the slow, but steady, progress made by the Allies since that eventful morning when Montgomery led his Eighth Army across the Strait of Messina. Having established the Anzio beachhead, the next move of the Allies was to strike out for the two main arteries—the Appian Way and the Via Casilina—over which supplies flowed to the Germans. But in January, however, bad weather caused a stalemate on all points of the front.
Happy landing in the Marshalls
January 30-February 4, 1944
A HEAVY BLOW TO JAPAN
The Japanese knew the Americans were planning to invade the Marshalls, but apparently thought the attack would start on the eastern chain of atolls, because they were nearer the Gilbert Islands which were conquered in November. On January 30, 31, American aircraft carriers sent swarms of planes to pound the islands. Temporarily blinded, the Japanese did not discover that a naval force, probably greater than any ever before assembled, was on its way—not to the eastern atolls, but to Kwajalein, in the sunset chain. The American warships, including new battleships, subjected the enemy installations on Kwajalein to a three-day bombardment probably unparalleled in history. For twenty years the Japanese had been building their defenses, but they couldn't stand up under such a shelling. Beach walls disappeared; concrete tank obstacles crumbled; pillboxes were smashed. This was a lesson the navy had learned from the costly assault on Tarawa in the Gilberts; a more sustained bombardment there might have saved lives. Another new trick at Kwajalein was to avoid an immediate head-on assault on the two strongest enemy bases—the islets of Roi and Kwajalein. Instead, troops and artillery were landed on near-by islets from which they could advance from various directions on Roi and Kwajalein under cover of pulverizing ground barrages. The foe was too stunned to offer resistance as fierce as that on Tarawa. The 4th Marine Division captured Roi on Tuesday, after having begun the landings on Monday. The 7th Infantry Division made the assault on Kwajalein islet. They encountered sterner opposition, but by the end of the week they had the Japanese cornered at the end of the islet. American forces then spread out to knock the enemy off the other islands of the atoll. In this picture, amphibious craft transporting Marines and army troops to the battered shores, are seen wiggling toward shore like a school of deadly fish during the last stages of the seizure of Kwajalein.
Victory in the Pacific
January 30, 1944
KWAJALEIN BOMBARDED
Less than three months after Tarawa fell, a giant and complex task force composed of U.S. Navy warships and transports, Marines and Army troops smashed down on Kwajalein Island in the heart of the Marshalls. An unprecedented aerial and ship bombardment devastated the island before the troops set foot ashore. In the picture above, an enormous cloud of black smoke veils much of the Kwajalein Atoll following a thunderous bombardment, while, below, guns of the task force open up shortly before dawn on January 30. The outline of the warship can be dimly traced.
Old Glory goes up on Kwajalein
February 4, 1944
THE RISING SUN SETS
Major General Charles H. Corlett, commander of the 7th Division, and another officer stand under the Stars and Stripes shortly after the flag was hoisted on Kwajalein. In the attack American casualties were unexpectedly low—much lower than on Tarawa. As for the sea forces, not a ship was sunk. Actually the islands were the first Japanese territory to be invaded by United States forces since the war began. Tokio regarded them as the outer front line of the Japanese Empire.
Kwajalein: the softening up
January 31, 1944
RETRIBUTION COMES TO KWAJALEIN
In the foreground of the picture at top, is the long quay built by the Japanese during their 25-year tenure on the Pacific atoll. A number of enemy landing barges can be seen tied up to it. In the background spray and smoke arise as bombs dropped by navy planes explode. While in the picture below, long, sweeping clouds of smoke stream out from U.S. warships on a "bombardment assembly line" as they pound enemy shores on Kwajalein during the second day of the invasion. Shortly after the U. S. fleet entered the lagoon of the atoll, safe from enemy submarines.
The Russians cross the Estonian border
February 2, 1944
RED ARMY SCORES ON THREE FRONTS
The Red Army scored spectacular military victories during the first week of February at both ends of the long battle front that winds across the continent from the Baltic to the Black Sea. At the north end of the battle line the Soviet Army was smashing across the border of Estonia. This northern offensive, three weeks old, had cleared the Nazis out of Leningrad and pushed them back out of an area forty miles deep by a hundred miles wide. The Russians were at the gates of the ancient city of Narva, Estonia, and only a few miles from the Gulf of Finland. In the Ukraine sector there had been virtually no change in the south Russian battlefield inside the Dnieper River bend, but on January 29 two Soviet armies suddenly launched simultaneous offensives, one of them pushing east and the other pushing west. In five days the two armies joined hands, closing a circular pocket some fifty miles in diameter. Within the pocket were ten German divisions; some estimates placed the total of trapped Germans as high as 100,000; and as shown in this picture these captured Nazis appeared weary and ill-clad. Meanwhile, in the Polish sector, the Russian columns had captured Rovno and Lutsk, eighty-five miles inside the old Polish border and it was apparent that the German high command had decided to withdraw to the Bug River in the hope of making a stand there. The river is the boundary that separated Germany and Russia when they divided up Poland in 1939.
The British move up in Italy
February, 1944
HEAVY GOING
British soldiers of the Allied Fifth Army move up through Calabritto to forward positions past a number of pieces of wrecked mechanized equipment in a ditch alongside of their path.
THROUGH THE RUINS
Men of a British regiment with support mortar companies marching through San Clements as they advance in Italy, passing scene after scene of desolation and destruction from the heavy fighting.
The Chinese hit their stride
February 5, 1944
FIGHT WAY INTO BURMA
Constructing the Ledo road into China was a matter of fighting both the jungle and the Japanese at the same time—a task which scarcely any one except General Stilwell would undertake. For more than a year he drilled Chinese troops for the project and for the last few months had been leading them successfully into northern Burma. In this picture three blindfolded Japanese are being led to the rear by Chinese soldiers after their capture on the Northern Burma front. Of particular interest are the modern U.S. combat helmets on soldiers at right and fifth from the right. They confirm the fact that at least a trickle of supplies was reaching the Chinese by air over the "hump". Since the closing of the Burma road by the Japanese, the Chinese had to depend entirely on air shipments from India. It was hoped that the Ledo road would provide supplies more plentifully.
And a little child shall lead them
February 7, 1944
SAVED FROM ENIEWETOK
Children of natives, rescued from the Japanese in Eniewetok Atoll, being put ashore on a peaceful island by Coast Guardsmen manning landing craft, a few days after the American invasion of this Pacific island which did not fall as readily as some of the other Japanese-controlled islands. It was not until the end of the month that capitulation of the Atoll was officially announced. American casualties were unexpectedly low in the Marshalls campaign, undoubtedly due to the terrific bombardment American warships (including new battleships) poured on the enemy installations. On Eniewetok, as on other areas taken by the Americans, our troops were for the most part warmly welcomed. The Japanese had proven themselves bad colonizers.
Burial at sea
February, 1944
LAST RITES
The flag-draped body of a United States Marine killed in the fighting on a Pacific isle is consigned to the sea from a transport standing off the island, as two navy chaplains in their Episcopal robes conduct the burial at sea service and the marine's shipmates in their camouflaged battle dress pay their last respects. Many of the Marines who were wounded in the fighting ashore had been hospitalized aboard ship. When they died they were buried at sea. There were many scenes such as these, as American action increased in the Pacific with a consequent rise in casualties.
End of a Nazi dive bomber
February 8, 1944
DOWN IN FLAMES OVER ANZIO
A German dive bomber falling in flames into Anzio Harbor after being hit by Allied A.A. gunners during an attack on the landing beach shortly after the Allies had forced a landing. The Germans suffered tremendous losses in their effort to hinder the Allied advance.
Aid for the Allies in Anzio
February 10, 1944
EQUIPMENT TO BLOCK THE NAZIS
One of the reasons the Allies were able to make such a stand in the Anzio battle was their ability to land men and material at all times due to the marked superiority in the air and on the sea. In this picture an Army Engineer shore regiment, composed of Negro troops, is unloading ammunition from an LCT (Landing Craft, Tanks) in the Anzio area. Any halt in the stream of supplies to Anzio would have cost the Allies the beachhead.
Two episodes in the fighting in Italy
February, 1944
BLIMEY!—WHAT A RACKET
A Canadian of the Eighth Army plugs his ears as he and his buddies shoot a mortar in the direction of German positions southeast of Tollo. For its size the mortar makes the biggest racket of all the field guns. In the picture at bottom, our infantry troops don't stop to ask if anybody is home as they storm a farmhouse on the way to Cassino. It houses a German observation post.
Sidelights along the road to Rome
February, 1944
THE ALLIES ARE HOSPITABLE
In the first picture, a middle-aged, bald-headed Nazi prisoner of the Fifth Army in the Anzio area is treated to a G.I. meal by his captors, while below, an American soldier finds the answer as to how the Italian child he has been playing with in his spare moments would look after an unsparing application of soap and water. So when four-year old Cleo, a friendly little girl, wandered into his encampment he gave her a good scrubbing. After the scrub comes the towel and Cleo's face shows results as our soldier nears the finish of the little Italian girl's ablutions.
One-man submarine at Anzio beachhead
February 6, 1944
YOUNG SKIPPER
U.S. Soldiers examine the one-man submarine (below) which landed on Peter Beach, Anzio beachhead. The tube on the left is the torpedo, the other is the driving compartment, housing one man. The torpedo tube is shackled to the driving tube and can be released, allowing the pilot to return safely. The pilot was a 17-year old Nazi (left) who was captured in the submarine. He told the officer that he had been in the service only six months.
Soldier of mercy
February, 1944
PRECIOUS BURDEN
Going resolutely about their work, the medical soldiers of the U.S. Army are continually on hand where they are needed, bearing precious blood plasma and other materials to save the lives of American soldiers. In this picture, loaded up with a life-saving burden of blood plasma and blankets, this soldier of the medical corps prepares to set out to help the wounded in the Cassino area as another corpsman helps adjust his sizeable pack.
Devil dogs and their dogs
February, 1944
BRING ON THE JAPANESE
U.S. Marine raiders and their jungle trained dogs on a Bougainville trail, ready to go to work hunting Japanese snipers. The dogs, beside running messages, are invaluable in seeking out Japanese too well hidden for the sharp eyes of the men to locate. The sharper senses of the dogs locate the enemy who are quickly dispatched to their ancestors by the leathernecks. The dogs had been recruited in the United States and many a home carried a service star in the window for the family pet who was sharing the discomforts of the war on a front far from the family fireside, or yard, that it loved so well. The great majority of the dogs were returned to their masters safe and sound, but many a home had to substitute a gold star for the blue star which signified that the family pet had gone into action with the armed forces.
"Long Tom" sends a message to the Italians
February, 1944
TOUGH ON THE EARDRUMS OF FRIEND AND FOE
An American 155 mm. "Long Tom" blows a smoke ring in the sky as it sends another load of death screaming toward the enemy in the Cassino sector of Italy. Members of the gun crew hold their hands over their ears, for the "Long Tom's" voice is robust and not very kind to the ears of those nearby or those who are on the receiving end. The "Long Tom" was one of the most effective units of American heavy artillery.
Task force interlude
February 6, 1944
TIME OUT ON A SOUTH PACIFIC ISLAND
Jungle fighting is tough and dirty, and when fighting Japanese there is very little time for the care of the teeth. But the first thing this officer of the United States Army (above) did after emerging from the front lines was to brush his teeth. Below, palm fronds bow gracefully in the wind, framing in tropical beauty the silhouetted ships of a United States Navy task force, lying at anchor off one of the atolls it helped conquer. Ashore, men of the Navy set up their camp on the conquered island.
Back against their old enemy
February, 1944
BACK IN ACTION
A column of French soldiers part of a unit fighting with the Fifth Army in Italy files through the ruined town of Acquafondata after Nazi patrols and snipers have been wiped out. The French, once again fighting their traditional enemies, the Germans, also routed them from Casale.
THE PATHS OF GLORY
Two French soldiers examine with satisfied smiles the graves of Nazi soldiers who died trying to keep Acquafondata against the attack of the French troops in the allied advance.
On the prowl for Nazis
February 12, 1944
STREET SCENE IN ANZIO
Their beachheads secured, British infantrymen move through Anzio on the hunt for Germans. The first stages of the battle south of Rome passed without a hitch; the trouble came later and soon the "secured beachhead" was stained with Allied and German blood. The first major German offensive designed to push the Allies off the beach below Rome was brought to a halt after the Nazis had gained about five miles and pushed the British out of two towns, Campoleone and Carroceto, ten miles from Anzio. The Germans struck hard in their effort to drive the Allies into the sea, but the Allied lines, aided by superior air power, were able to hold off the Nazi drive. It was too early, however, to say that the Nazis had lost their offensive punch. They had elements of perhaps as many as nine divisions on the beachhead front, and they still had orders to drive the Allies into the sea. There was no respite either for the British on the northern rim or the Americans on the eastern flank and for a few days bad weather slowed up our advantage in the skies. Despite the comparative ease with which the beachhead was established, the fight to break out of the Anzio pocket was to be a prolonged one.
Japanese surrender on Namur Island
February 3, 1944
DESTROYING THE ENEMY ON NAMUR
On February 3, the process of annihilating the enemy was proceeding on Namur Island. The remnants of the Japanese garrison had been trapped. About 36 hours after the fall of Namur, a blockhouse was found on the island still to be in the hands of the enemy. Moreover, it was soon discovered that it still contained a somewhat larger garrison than was at first suspected. It was supposed that the occupants had been waiting for a counter-attack when it is presumed they would have emerged and taken part in the renewed fighting. Their strong point was, however, blown up. The picture shows the capture of those of its occupants who remained alive after the destruction of the blockhouse. They surrendered to the United States Marines.
R.A.F. over Germany at night
February 15, 1944
R.A.F. OVER BERLIN
On February 15, the R.A.F. made a very large-scale night attack on Berlin. Over 1,000 aircraft dropped 2,500 tons of bombs at the rate of eighty tons a minute. The ground defenses were active but little fighter opposition was met. Large fires were started and the smoke clouds rose four miles high. The communications of the city were put out of action. Top: Allied bombers on the raid show fantastic vapor trails. Bottom: Incendiary bombs drop towards their target.
Good neighbor policy in the Pacific
February, 1944
IN THE NEW YORK TRADITION
A member of the "Fighting 69th" opens two cans of "C" rations containing cookies and candies and presents them to a native girl and her mother walking along the road between two villages on the eastern end of Makin Atoll in the Gilbert Islands, an American occupied base seized in the bitter fighting with the Japanese in the latter part of November, 1943. Makin had been raided earlier in the war, although no attempt was made to take it.
Cassino takes a lacing
February 6, 1944
ANCIENT ABBEY IN THE NEWS
Smoke rises from the Italian town of Cassino during the bombardment by artillery of the Fifth Army, February 6, prior to the bombing by flying fortresses of the ancient Benedictine Monastery (shown on peak-top) nine days later. The Nazis had been using the ancient monastery as a lookout post from which to direct artillery fire and as a shelter for their gunners. The American command debated many days before levelling the monastery.
A Monastery is wrecked
February 15, 1944
MODERN DANTE'S INFERNO
Taken from a USAAF reconnaissance plane a few minutes after the last wave of bombers had turned away from the record-breaking aerial assault on the Benedictine monastery atop Mount Cassino, this picture provides graphic evidence of the devastation wrought upon the Nazi bastion by hundreds of tons of high explosives. This partial view of Cassino (the abbey shrouded by smoke) shows that not one structure remained untouched by Allied bombs—the abbey was in ruins.
Bombs rain on Japan's "Pearl Harbor"
February 16, 1944
TRUK IN FLAMES
Hard on the heels of the smashing U.S. victory at Kwajalein and twenty-six months after Pearl Harbor, the United States paid the Japanese back in kind, although without the peacetime sneak element. At dawn on Wednesday, February 16, several hundred American planes, flying from carriers, swooped down on Truk—which is to Japan what Hawaii is to the United States—and rained bombs down on the enemy fleet sitting in the placid lagoon. On December 7, 1941, a few more than a hundred Tokio planes took part in the attack on Pearl Harbor; our armada that blasted Truk on this February morning must have been as much as three times as large. Escorting the carriers on the raid was a powerful naval force, including battleships, cruisers and destroyers. The attack on Truk was more than a raid; it was a challenge to the enemy fleet to come out and fight. The challenge was not accepted, and the task force assault of February 16, 17, ended the legend that the Carolinas' base was invulnerable. Some idea of the terrain of the Japanese base and the extent of its formidable installations can be gathered from this official United States Navy photograph taken during the great raid. Forty ships were sunk or damaged and 201 planes were destroyed. But still remaining were the extensive airfields, troop concentrations and installations portrayed in this picture. In the harbor a flotilla of Japanese vessels of varying sizes huddles under the rain of U.S. Navy bombs, while the largest of the ships smokes from a hit forward.
A Japanese warship goes up in smoke
February 16, 1944
CAUGHT ON THE RUN
A towering column of black smoke marks the sinking of a Japanese patrol vessel blasted by the five-inch guns of a United States warship as the enemy craft was fleeing from Truk harbor. The patrol craft was one of the forty ships sunk or damaged in the two-day raid on what was supposed to be the impregnable "Pearl Harbor" of our Tokio enemy.
Eniwetok falls
February 18, 1944
ANOTHER STEPPING-STONE
Swooping down to within one hundred feet of the ground, a U.S. Navy plane from one of the aircraft carriers supporting the invasion, snapped this action photograph of the seizure of Eniwetok in the Marshalls. The atoll was captured on February 19, 1944, by a combined force of Marines and infantrymen. In this picture a giant shellhole in the sand affords admirable cover for Marines advancing across the atoll against the beleaguered Japanese defenders. Outlined in its own ashes at the left is a wrecked two-motored Japanese plane.
Along the highway to Tokio
February 18, 1944
JAPAN'S BLACKEST MONTH
Probably no month in Japan's history had been so black as the month of February. American successes in the far-flung islands of the Pacific, from New Guinea to the Marianas, left no doubt of the offensive power of the United States. Premier Tojo told his cabinet that the "situation was truly grave," and that the empire literally was "standing at the crossroads of a rise or fall." Tojo then acted by dismissing chiefs of the army and navy general staffs—Field Marshal Sugiyama and Admiral Nogano. In this picture a task force moves in to seize Engebi on February 18.
The cost of an invasion
February 19, 1944
WE PAY FOR ENIWETOK
Coast Guard and Navy medical corpsmen prepare to evacuate Marine casualties by landing craft back to transports during the seizure of Eniwetok Atoll in the Marshalls on Saturday, February 19. Note the line of blood plasma bottles above wounded men, and activity on the beachhead as supplies and reserve troops pour in. Americans took over the north-westernmost atoll of the Marshall group, extending the American spearhead another 400 miles in the direction of Tokio. The American blows were following each other with a speed that gave the Japanese no rest.
Front row view of a sea battle off Saipan
February 22, 1944
A TASK FORCE IN ACTION
Detected by the foe as it sailed daringly into the range of land based planes, a United States Navy task force grimly fought off Japanese raiders for eleven hours. Then in the teeth of the aerial storm it launched its own planes to strike a smashing blow at Saipan and Tinian in the Marianas on Washington's birthday, 1944. Spitting death with precision and accuracy, the guns of ships in the task force shot down fourteen Japanese torpedo bombers and dive bombers to bring the total score of enemy planes destroyed in the raid up to 135. Six U.S. Navy planes were lost, five enemy ships were sunk or damaged in the blow, loosed by the same task force which had hammered Truk in the Carolinas group so successfully only five days previously. In this action-studded picture, pilots and crewmen of a U.S. Navy carrier cheer exultantly as guns of their task force send a Japanese plane to a blazing finish. Smoke from the burning plane and from anti-aircraft shells blend into the leaden background provided by the overcast sky. The Americans were on their way and with such speed that the Japanese were badly confused. After this spectacular demonstration of America's might by the airplane carrier task force under Rear Admiral Marc A. Mitscher, Premier Tojo dismissed the chiefs of the Army and Navy general staffs, Field Marshal Sugiyama and Admiral of the Fleet Nogano, men whose positions corresponded to those of General Marshall and Admiral King in this country.
Two kings of the jungle
February 22, 1944
REUNION IN BURMA
Brigadier General Frank Merrill, right, confers with Lieutenant General Joseph W. Stilwell as the campaign in northern Burma got under way. The American troops under command of General Merrill had plunged into the jungle on Washington's birthday and started a one-hundred mile march into the Hukawng Valley, where General Stilwell's Chinese troops already were pressing back the Japanese in a drive to clear the Ledo highway route to China. The Americans had mules to haul their equipment.
The Nazis did a good job here
February 23, 1944
SLOWING UP THE ALLIES
German engineers did a bang-up job of wiping off the map this road winding near the summit of a steep hill in the path of the British Eighth Army's drive through Italy. The road was wrecked when the Nazis blasted away a considerable chunk of the hill, but the unbeatable 8th Army by-passed the road and pushed ahead as they had done on so many fronts since El Alamein.
A million tons of warships drop anchor
February, 1944
DEFYING THE JAPANESE
A million tons of U.S. Naval might are given a visual meaning in this picture of part of the first U.S. Navy war fleet to drop anchor in waters that were Japanese prior to the Pearl Harbor attack. Taken at Kwajalein shortly after the Marshall Island atoll had been conquered.
Throughout March and April, Allied and German forces continued the drawn-out battle of Italy. It was not until May 12 that Americans and British began the offensive that turned the tide of victory in their favor. Operations began with an assault on Cassino, so stubbornly held by the Germans for many months. Castleforte fell on May 14 and four days later the Allies entered Cassino, Esperia and Formia. On May 23 the drive to break out of the Anzio beachhead pocket was launched. As in the battle to the south, the Allies now possessed the advantage of complete superiority in the air, a factor which played a big part in the following successful days. The break-through was accomplished on May 25 when the Anzio forces joined the main group coming north at Littoria.
By May 30 General Clark's Fifth Army was engaging the enemy in Alban Hills just south of Rome. They won Mount Peschio on June 1, and then, on June 4, marched into the Eternal City which they found about ninety-five percent intact, despite the heavy pounding which had been directed at its railroad yards. Throughout June and July the Germans retreated steadily northward. On July 19 an official communique announced the capture by the Allies of Leghorn on the west coast and Ancona on the east coast. This meant that two-thirds of the Italian boot was now in Allied hands. But from here the advance during August was fractional. The Germans were making a stand along their famous and strongly fortified Gothic Line, about 100 miles north of Rome.
March found the Russians making great strides in the south. On March 13 their forces crossed the Dnieper River and took the Black Sea port of Kherson at a cost to the Germans of 63,000 men. After Kherson, the drive on Nikolayev and the big base at Odessa began. When Nikolayev was captured on March 28, the Russians immediately rushed six divisions to the Prut River, the border between Russia and Rumania. Two days later this army took Cernauti, the principal city of Bukovina, ceded to Russia by Rumania in 1940 and captured by the Nazis in 1941. Odessa held out until April 10.
To the east in Crimea, heavy fighting was going on for the possession of this peninsula. Kerch was entered by the Russians on April 11. On May 9, Sevastopol, badly battered after withstanding its second siege of the war, was regained by the Russians. This victory virtually ended Axis resistance in Crimea. An official Russian communique announced on May 12 that the five-week campaign in Crimea had cost German and Rumanian armies 111,857 men.
The Russians did not begin their serious drive in the north until early July. By July 10, however, they had reached the Latvian border, and on July 13 had taken Vilna, which they had encircled weeks earlier. Two weeks later, on July 27, they enjoyed one of their greatest days of the war when Lwow, Bialystock and Divinsk were taken within 24 hours. A few days later they were laying siege to Warsaw from 10 miles away and on August 1 were within 12 miles of East Prussia, being the first time they were within sight of pre-war German soil. On the same day Kaunas, capital of Lithuania, fell to another Russian army.
The first of the Axis satellites to desert the combination was Rumania whose King Mihai, with his country torn by the struggle between the Russian invaders and Nazi "protectors", surrendered to the Allies on August 23. The Germans continued the battle of Rumania for some days but rapidly lost ground. The Russians took the strategic Black Sea port of Constanta, August 29, and marched into Ploesti, center of the Rumanian oil fields, on August 30. Thus, as the fifth year of the war ended, Germany had lost all the Russian territory gained in 1941 and 1942, and retained a slipping finger-hold on the Baltic States.
Action in the Burma theater began in late March by a Japanese thrust from Burma into India. By April 14 they had completely surrounded Imphal, an important Indian city, and were making deeper penetrations westwards. Simultaneously with the Japanese move, however, a combined group composed of American infantry, Chinese troops and General Wingate's Raiders started an offensive of their own, calculated to reopen the Burma Road. By May 21 they had entered the critical Japanese base at Myitkyina, although heavy fighting still raged for actual possession of this prize for many weeks. By this time, the threat to Imphal and other points in India had waned, and the Japanese were retreating into Burma.
In New Guinea, General MacArthur's forces made another leap in their northwesterly progress along the coast when on April 23 they landed strong forces at Hollandia and Aitape. Within a few days all enemy resistance in this area had ceased and the retreating troops were being cut down by air attack which was particularly effective in the Wewak area. Signs of growing Allied naval strength were indicated on May 19 by a carrier force raid on Surabaya, the former Dutch naval base which had been in Japanese hands since the spring of 1942.
Biak Island was invaded successfully by American forces on May 27. This brought MacArthur one step nearer to the Philippines to which he had promised to return when he left in 1942. June 15 brought the first serious bombing of Japan proper since the Doolittle raid. A force of new B-29 bombers, operating from Chinese bases, successfully raided the Owata steel works on the island of Kyushu.
More big news was announced on June 15 when it became known that a large American force had landed on Saipan Island in the Marianna group. The battle for Saipan lasted until July 9 and cost the Americans nearly 10,000 casualties. Other American invasions in this area were the islands of Guam and Tinian, both launched July 22. Tinian was completely in American hands by August 2, although control of Guam was not gained until August 10.
For months the world had been awaiting the news of an Allied invasion of France and the establishment of a western front. Starting in the Fall of 1943, American and British planes had pounded steadily at German industry and communications. The tempo had increased in the Spring of 1944 with special concentration on French railroad centers, an indication that the invasion operations were near at hand.
"D" Day came on the morning of June 6. Supported by a great assemblage of warships and supply vessels, American, British and Canadian troops landed on the shores of Normandy. The British and Canadians came ashore near Caen, and the Americans selected a spot farther to the east. Within forty-eight hours it was known that the Allied beachheads were safe and had been won at a cost considerably under pre-conceived estimates. The Americans took Bayeaux, June 8, Carentan, June 12, and then drove northeast towards Cherbourg, the only deep-water port on the Coentin Peninsula. Cherbourg fell June 27, an important victory which gave the Americans a port for the landing of heavy equipment. For the next 30 days the Nazis kept the Americans well bottled up in Normandy, although an important gain was the American capture of St. Lo on July 19.
Meanwhile, the British and Canadians had been having their difficulties in the Caen area. After out-flanking and finally surrounding it, they captured the city on July 9. In England the populace was experiencing a new terror, the robot bomb. A few days after "D" Day, the robots began falling in the London area in large quantities. They were sped from launching platforms in the Pas-de-Calais sector of France, and so regulated to end their flight and drop on London. On July 7, Prime Minister Winston Churchill revealed that 8,000 persons had been killed or injured.
The great American offensive started on July 26 when armored units under the command of General George S. Patton broke out of the Normandy pocket. By August 2, Patton's forces had entered Brittany, some units speeding towards Brest and some cutting directly across the base of the peninsula. They took Rennes August 4, and then executed a flanking maneuver in an easterly direction towards Le Mans. Important victories were scored on August 10 when the Americans took St. Malo in Brittany, Nantes—which sealed up the peninsula—and LeMans. Canadians broke out of the Caen pocket on August 9 and started a drive to join the American forces working north from LeMans. In this fashion a trap was sprung on the Germans still in the Normandy area. During the next days the Germans' frantic attempts to escape through the slowly closing jaws met with only partial success. Their losses in men and irreplaceable equipment were critical, and to the boldness of this Allied operation can be attributed much of the reason for the triumph in France.
On August 15, another blow was struck when Americans landed in southern France. Coming from bases in Italy, they landed in the Riviera sector between Marseille and Nice. They met with relatively minor opposition and were soon driving up the Rhone River valley. After the capture of LeMans, Patton's men moved forward with incredible speed. By August 21 they had crossed the Seine and were outflanking Paris. This city was reported freed by the French Forces of the Interior on August 21, but it was not until August 24 that its liberation was assured by the entrance of Allied troops. On August 29, Americans bridged the Marne, and on August 31 they were in Chateau Thierry of World War I fame. September 1, 1944, the fifth anniversary of the Second World War, found the Battle of France won and the Battle for Germany about to begin.
The paths of glory near their end for Hitler
March 1, 1944
THE TUMULT AND THE SHOUTING DIES
As the last half of the fifth year of the war got under way, Adolf Hitler found the day of reckoning drawing closer and closer; before the year had ended the Allies were swarming all over France and driving his legions to surrender or back to the German soil. In this picture, taken (in 1936) at a Nuremberg congress, der Fuehrer, using a somewhat forceful gesture, is shown addressing his adherents in the Luitpold Arena, with the Nazi swastika outlined on the platform.
American bombers blast Berlin for the first time
March 4, 1944
MUSTANGS AND FORTRESSES HIT IN DAYLIGHT
American Flying Fortresses dropped bombs on Berlin in daylight for the first time on March 4, 1944, while other groups of American heavy bombers raided targets in Eastern Germany. Fourteen American bombers and twenty-six fighters failed to return from the day's mission over Germany. Only forty German planes rose to intercept the raiders over the German capital. This round-trip flight of 1,200 miles from British bases to the Nazi capital and back was made in temperatures as low as 76 degrees below zero and in blinding snowstorms. The weight of bombs dropped only gave Berliners a taste of what they were to get in coming weeks from American Fortresses and Liberators and the load was infinitesimal compared with the 32,000 tons which the Royal Air Force had dumped into the German capital in ninety-five raids by heavy bombers and a number of lighter attacks by Mosquitoes. Since the battle of Berlin began last November 18, R.A.F. bombers had made more than fifteen major attacks and dropped 23,800 tons of bombs—more than three times the weight hurled at London during the entire 1940-41 blitz, and now, with the Americans taking to the air in the daytime, the Battle of Berlin was on in earnest. In this picture hits are registered on a textile and rayon plant in the Wittenberg district, southwest of greater Berlin, during the daylight attack.
Raids on Berlin protested
March 5, 1944
THE CLERGY PROTEST
On Sunday, March 4, twenty-eight American clergymen and other leaders— including the Rev. Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick, John Haynes Holmes, Oswald Garrison Villard and the Rev. Dr. Allan Knight Chalmers—issued a protest against obliteration bombing of German cities and urged an end to "participation in this carnival of death." In this picture American bombs, dropped by raiders of the U.S. 8th A.A.F., get their target in the industrial section of the Nazi capital.
Wearing down the Luftwaffe
March 6, 1944
HEADACHES FOR HITLER & CO
The American Air Force took up in a big way by daylight the task which the Royal Air Force had been carrying out so powerfully by night—the obliteration of Berlin as the capital of Germany. A second goal was to destroy the Luftwaffe on the wing—an objective which could be achieved better by daylight. Evidence of the clarity with which the U.S. Army airmen could spot the landmarks of Berlin is shown in this picture in which the Sportspalast stands out vividly.
The battle of Berlin at its peak
March 6, 1944
RAZING THE NAZI CAPITAL
The war in the air reached a new and perhaps decisive phase on March 6 when about 800 American heavy bombers fought their way through the massed strength of the German metropolitan air force to blast factories, airfield and other military installations. The air battles that raged around and within the tight, wedge-shaped formations of Flying Fortresses and Liberators were the greatest in history, with more than 2,000 tons of bombs dropped on Berlin's vital industrial and military targets. American losses in the big blow at the Nazi capital were heavy, sixty-eight bombers and eleven fighters failed to return, while 176 Nazi planes were downed in the fierce fighting; ninety-three planes were accounted for by Flying Fortresses and Liberators, while Allied escorting craft destroyed eighty-three of the enemy machines. In addition to these heavy losses to the Nazi fighter force, already suffering from the effect of two weeks of the Allies' heavy day and night attacks over the Reich, returning pilots reported "first rate" bombing results in the heart of the Nazi capital. The attack, which was not the biggest daylight operation of the war, was by far the heaviest daylight attack on Berlin. "Bombs were seen to fall on assigned targets," General Spaatz reported in his communique, but many of the missiles had to be loosed at random due to the overcast sky. In this picture, while her sister ships roar on, a huge cloud of smoke is all that remains of a U. S. 8th A.A.F. Flying Fortress which received a direct hit from flak and exploded over the suburbs of Berlin during the large-scale operation.
Sniper inn on Bougainville
March, 1944
LIFE IN THE FOXHOLES
In the picture at top, a U. S. Soldier is shown on the alert in a foxhole on Bougainville, complete with sandbags and camouflage cover, while in the picture below, taken on Hill 700, a live Japanese soldier, evidently terrified, is shown during battle action on the same island. He had hidden himself in an American foxhole where he crouched until he was taken alive.
Temporary stalemate in Italy
March 7, 1944
MAKING THEMSELVES AT HOME
In the first part of March the military position in southern Italy remained unchanged, both in the Anzio beachhead and on the Gustav line to the south. Allied commanders thought the Germans were probably organizing their troops for a fourth offensive, designed to drive the Allies into the sea, but if so it had not begun. Sixty miles deeper in Italy the Americans clung to about one-third of the town of Cassino, but had not yet launched a major attack to knock the Germans out of that which barred the road to Rome. The Americans and British were badly handicapped by the mountainous country which made progress almost impossible in bad weather. The Germans would station themselves on a hill and hold it until driven off by heavy attack. They would then fortify another hill for which they would exact a high price before giving up. In this picture a squad of American G.I.'s make themselves at home in what used to be a Nazi pill-box on the Gustav Line.
Distraction on the Burma front
March, 1944
MOVING UP
American trained Chinese troops move up to the Burma front, passing Japanese dead. Note how the soldiers are holding their nostrils. Scenes like this were common as General Stilwell's drive to open a road to China gained momentum. Columns of the British 14th Army went into action for the first time in support of the American-Chinese offensive, making a surprise thrust from the upper Chindwin River that threatened to outflank the Japanese retreating from the Hukawng Valley. The Japanese were harassed further by airborne troops that landed behind their lines. Although the enemy had a big head start in the technique of jungle fighting at the beginning of the war, it was evident that the Americans and British were learning all the tricks and adding a few new frills.
The General and the Admiral meet
March, 1944
ON THE BURMA FRONT
Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, supreme commander Southeast Asia command, confers with Lieutenant General Joseph Stilwell shortly after Brigadier General Frank Merrill's American infantry units had gone into action against the Japanese. The first assignment for the American fighters in Burma was to cut their way through trackless jungle, outflanking the Japanese who, at the time, were holding up the Chinese advance. This maneuver was an adaptation of the Japanese road-block tactics which proved so devastating against the British in Malaya and Burma at the beginning of the War.
The Admirals inspect some new bases
March, 1944
LOOKING OVER THE MARSHALLS
Admiral C. W. Nimitz, left, Commander-in-chief, U.S. Pacific fleet and Pacific Ocean areas, and Admiral (then Vice Admiral) Raymond A. Spruance, commander of the Central Pacific force, U.S. Pacific fleet, on an inspection trip of newly acquired bases in the Marshall Islands. They returned to their headquarters well pleased with the results obtained by their men.
Nazis cut off in the Ukraine
March 7, 1944
THE RUSSIANS PUSH ON
Hitler consistently refused to believe that his divisions could be crushed by the Russians, but the Red Army demonstrated at Stalingrad and later in the Korsun trap that his confidence was unwarranted. Nevertheless, Hitler allowed perhaps half a million troops to remain in the Dnieper River bulge in South Russia while attention was focused on the Soviet drive in the Baltic region a thousand miles to the north. The result was that thousands of Nazi troops were taken prisoner (as shown in picture at top) and the entire German force in the Ukraine was put in a position which would be called disastrous except that the Nazi high command so frequently had wiggled its men out of seemingly hopeless spots. Two days later the Russians entered Tarnopol and were threatening the important bases at Nekolayev and Kherson. The Russians were on their way to Rumania and the recapture of Bessarabia. In the picture at bottom, a Soviet captain of the Ukrainian Army leads his men in an impromptu celebration marking the success of the Red Army.
The Italian fleet in the news again
March 9, 1944
THE FLEET TO STAY NEAR HOME
The hullabaloo over the disposition of the Italian fleet tended to overshadow the military developments in Italy due to President Roosevelt remarking that a third of the Italian fleet might be turned over to Russia, drawing the fire of Premier Badoglio, who threatened to resign over what he called a blow at the dignity of his government. However, the matter was smoothed over when Prime Minister Churchill announced that the Italian fleet would continue to operate in the Mediterranean. One unit of the fleet, the cruiser Eugenio Di Savoia, is shown at the right, while, below, a group of vessels, including a midget submarine, is shown tied up at Malta after their surrender to the Allies.
The French feel the pangs of hunger
March, 1944
UNDER THE NAZI HEEL
Hunger and privation were the lot of many of the people of France under Nazi domination, and thousands of children and old persons were unable to subsist on the sparse diet allowed by the Germans who had taken over all but the bare necessities of life for their own use. In the picture at top hundreds of Parisians are shown lined up waiting for a food store to open, while below, some old people, unable to stand in line, await a meagre handout.
The end of a coup in Argentina
March 10, 1944
A NEW PRESIDENT TAKES THE REINS
General Edelmiro J. Farrell, left, assumed the office of President of Argentina on March 10, following the formal resignation of President Pedro Ramirez, right. General Farrell had been acting President of the South American nation since February 25, 1944, when the Argentine colonels' clique, known as the G.O.U., staged a coup early in the morning and forced the resignation of President Ramirez to prevent a declaration of war against Germany and Japan which was scheduled to be issued the last week of February. On March 1 President Farrell and his government survived what, in the intention of its organizers, should have been a vast counter-revolutionary movement, having as its program the restoration of General Ramirez to the presidency and the calling of free elections at the earliest possible date. The entire navy and a considerable part of the army were to have participated in the coup, but because of a lack of coordination between units that should have risen, or because of a mistake in timing, only one regiment, the Third Infantry, revolted, then the regiment, seeing that it was unaided, surrendered without firing a shot. Recognition of the Farrell regime, however, was withheld by America and Great Britain on account of the government's pro-Nazi sympathies. While not a belligerent, Argentina's role in World War II was filled with significance. Under the aegis of the good neighbor policy, all of the other Latin American nations had come to the support of the United States in the pursuit of the war. For years Germany had been cultivating the friendship of the South American country, even sending her military experts to train Argentina's army which came to closely resemble the Wehrmacht. Soon after the United States entered the war it became apparent that Germany had agents stationed in Argentina who were giving valuable military information to the Fatherland. The efforts of both the United States and Great Britain to alienate Argentina from Axis ties had met little success up to this date.
Baptism of fire
March, 1944
WARM RECEPTION FOR THE FOE
The Americans mop up on Bougainville. Even the bazooka does not rout some Japanese from their holes, and the flame-thrower must be brought into use. Note the two soldiers firing as the flame man uses weapon against this enemy pillbox on Bougainville. Fighting had been continuing on the important island of the Solomons since the American landings in November. Although practically cut off from their source of supplies, the Japanese were still struggling.
The French underground action
March, 1944
SABOTAGE HITS THE NAZIS
The French Underground, composed of patriots who kept on resisting the German conquerors in every possible manner, was of terrific help to the Allied movement. Their work consisted of slowing up production in munitions and arms factories. Examples of sabotage are shown in these two pictures of wrecked trains. Hundreds of Frenchmen were arrested by the Gestapo and shot in reprisals, but the underground movement kept on, patiently waiting for the day of deliverance.
The Germans try to stem the Russian tide
March 14, 1944
A RED AVALANCHE ROLLS ON
In these pictures, captured German newsreel photos, two German gun crews are shown on duty behind their gun on the Ukrainian front. The Nazi high command apparently had hoped to gain time by making a stand on the Bug River, but Marshal Konev's 2nd Ukrainian Army broke through, crossed the river and pushed west. The German retreat was ragged and disorderly in places. In capturing one railroad junction the 2nd Army seized two whole military trains loaded with Nazi war equipment.
Some Japanese retire from the strife of battle
March, 1944
THEIR TOUGH DAYS ARE OVER
Japanese prisoners captured in recent Central Pacific operations debark from a ship which brought them to a Pacific base. They are wearing clothing furnished them by the United States and are bound for a prison camp where they were to receive all consideration due them under the Geneva Convention. This was in sharp contrast to the barbaric treatment accorded American and other Allied soldiers captured by the Japanese during their early success in the Pacific theatre. Allied prisoners who were fortunate enough to escape from their Japanese captors brought back blood-curdling stories of atrocities practiced on themselves and their buddies. The Japanese in this picture had apparently decided that being captured was better than dying for the Emperor.
Tough going for the Russian troops
March 16, 1944
ADVANCING THROUGH THE SNOW
Red Army tommy gunners in white winter camouflage go into action on the front line on the Ukrainian front, despite the heavy winter weather. The Russians seemed to thrive on this "heavy going" but not so the Germans who were being captured by the thousands as Marshal Konev's fast moving army pushed on westward toward Rumania in what Berlin called a "disengaging movement."
Landings in the Admiralty Islands
March, 1944
SOUTH-WEST PACIFIC ACTION
On March 15 American troops landed on Manus Island in the Admiralty group after a heavy preliminary bombardment from the sea and from the air. The first attack destroyed land-mines, machine gun nests and booby traps and advanced inland in the Lorengau airfield. On the following day the airfield was captured and we were only 600 yards from Lorengau itself. On March 18, after a fierce tank battle, Lorengau fell. Top, American troops, holding their weapons and ammunition above their heads, land on Namur Island. Bottom, the Allies land supplies on Green Island. A landing-craft may be seen at the left of the picture.
Another stepping-stone falls
March 22, 1944
HARBINGERS OF VICTORY
Far below this U.S. Navy Dauntless dive-bomber, an aircraft carrier sweeps about in a sharp turn in the Pacific, heading with other ships of a powerful task force for the Japanese-held Emirau Island. At the scheduled time the task force reached its goal. The planes dived and bombed, ships' guns thundered. Marines landed and before nightfall the island was ours.
The Allies lose a colorful figure
March 24, 1944
KILLED IN ACTION
Major General Orde Charles Wingate, leader of the Imperial air-borne Commando forces in Burma, was killed when the plane in which he was riding crashed in the Burma jungle. One of the most colorful figures in modern warfare, his fabulous exploits with air-borne troops, landed behind the Japanese lines in the jungles, had established him as the "Lawrence of Arabia" of this war.
Supplies for Anzio
March 24, 1944
ON THE ANZIO BEACHHEAD
Meanwhile the slow progress on the Anzio beachhead had been causing considerable anxiety in some quarters although the official report had stated that the situation was "well in hand." The Germans continued to launch heavy attacks with great frequency and on March 24 they resorted again to long-range shelling. There were several sharp artillery duels and although two strong enemy patrols were destroyed while attempting to filter through the Allied lines, bad weather conditions prevented very much patrolling activity on either side. There was considerable aerial activity over the Anzio front. "Warhawks" and "Thunderbolts" attacked enemy gun positions, ammunition dumps and other targets. Strong Luftwaffe opposition was met. On March 27 five enemy machines were destroyed when the enemy made an unsuccessful raid on the port of Anzio. There were no Allied losses. The next day the Germans made a further attack and bombed two hospitals. The casualties amounted to eight killed and seventy wounded. But in the meantime the enemy was unable to prevent the steady flow of war materials coming into the beachhead and ships continued to arrive at Anzio harbor in spite of attacks by U-boats, fighter bombers and radio-controlled glider bombs. Owing to the extensive demolitions around the harbor, supply ships had to anchor offshore and unload their cargoes on to ducks and landing craft. The picture shows the inner harbor of Anzio where two landing craft are unloading. In the background can be seen some of the buildings damaged by heavy shell fire and aerial bombardment.
The Nazis flood Holland
March 24, 1944
THE GERMANS PREPARE FOR INVASION
Land which had been drained and cultivated by the Dutch over a period of centuries was ruined for years to come by German defense methods, as shown in these pictures released by the Dutch Underground. So far only a little land had been inundated, the Dutch reported, in the area north of Amsterdam. But civilians were being evacuated in other districts below water level. If the Nazis were to carry out the project totally they could undo the work of more than two centuries in reclaiming land from the sea. To flood the land with salt water would ruin the top soil upon which nearly 4,000,000 Hollanders depended for their livelihood. The Dutch also reported that Marshal Rommel had set up his headquarters at Breda.
Beautiful and treacherous foe in Italy
March 24, 1944
DISAPPOINTMENT IN ITALY
During the last week in March the situation in Italy was anything but encouraging. The offensive against Cassino, which began on the 14th and was followed by the obliteration air raid, was conceded to be a failure. The attack had dwindled away into artillery exchanges. Germans regained control of the slopes of Mount Cassino. Indian Gurkha troops which had been isolated on Hangman's Hill were withdrawn; it was useless to keep on supplying them by air after the rest of the offensive had subsided. The Nazis still blocked the road to Rome, as they had been doing for two months. The outlook was equally discouraging on the Anzio Beachhead, below Rome. Two months of grim, costly fighting had gained little ground and on the 8th Army Front, after months of ploughing through mud and rain, the Allies had to contend with equally treacherous snow. Lofty white peaks, such as the ones facing the 8th Army fighters in this picture, provided natural defense barriers for the enemy who had had the weather man on his side ever since the start of the Allied campaign in Italy.
The Pacific fleet hits Palau
March 29, 1944
A STEP CLOSER TO THE PHILIPPINES
Just as American flyers searched the skies of Europe for Nazi planes, so our Navy scoured the seas of the Orient for Japanese warships. On the 29th a strong task force, including battleships as well as aircraft carriers (first picture), descended upon the Palau Islands to make an attack similar to the fleet raid on Truk in the middle of February. This was the deepest penetration yet made in the Pacific offensive, for Palau is more than a thousand miles west of Truk and within 600 miles of the Philippines. Enemy planes spotted the oncoming task force, with the result that the Japanese ships were seen to flee from the area before our attack. The enemy had no desire to come to grips. In the second picture, silhouetted against the sun-set-inflamed sea, Yap City crackles and smokes under flames during the task force attack.
The sun sets on a Japanese warship
March 29, 1944
RAID ON PALAU
Piercing the heart of a vital Japanese defense zone, a mighty U.S. Navy force blistered the enemy fortress of Palau, within 600 miles of the Philippines, then swung out to smash Woleai and Yap. Lasting from March 29 to March 31, 1944, the attack proved the increasing ability of a naval task force to penetrate the foe's island fortress area, protected from destruction from the air by its own aerial umbrella. The Japanese had no major fleet units at any of the three bases raided, but, as this photograph reveals, what shipping they did have there fell before the accuracy of the American gunners. In addition a heavy toll was taken of Japanese air strength. One hundred and sixty of their planes were destroyed and fifty-four more were damaged at a total cost of twenty-five American planes.
The Chinese keep the Japanese on the alert
March, 1944
ON THE BURMA FRONT
A soldier of the 22nd Chinese Division in a mortar position in the northern part of the Mogaung Valley in Northern Burma, several miles north of Shadazup. Shelling enemy positions only 1,000 yards away, this Chinese soldier is placing a projectile into a heavy 4.2 mortar, which the Chinese learned to use with great success against their foe in the hills of Northern Burma.
Bukovina falls to the Russians
March 30, 1944
THE RUSSIANS MAKE GREAT STRIDES
Having reached the Prut River, which Moscow considers to be the border between Russia and Rumania, the Red Army spread out along its eastern bank for a distance of some 80 miles, but made no attempt to cross into Rumania proper, but did take Cernauti, the chief city of Bukovina, ceded to Russia by Rumania in 1940 and captured by the Nazis in 1941. The Reds continued to seize thousands of Nazi soldiers, unkempt and bedraggled as shown in this picture.
The Chinese pick up a gun
March, 1944
SPOILS OF WAR
Chinese troops in the India-Burma theatre, examine the barrel and breech assembly of a captured Japanese 37 mm. anti-tank gun which is being loaded into a jeep. The gun will later be used against the Japanese. It is a copy of an old American model, revised by the men of Tokio for use as a pack gun to be carried by horse or mule. The Chinese were able to salvage a lot of the foe's material.
Russian return to Nikolayev
March 30, 1944
SOVIET NAVAL BASE REGAINED
During the Russian advance in the last week of March, the important base at Nikolayev fell to the Red Army. Above is one of the demolished ship yards, photographed after the recapture. In the bottom picture, the citizens of Kiev are shown still working to clean up their city which was retaken from the Germans in November.
Forging ahead in the Ukraine
March, 1944
BACK IN KHERSON
Above is an industrial plant in Kherson, reduced to ruins by the Germans before their evacuation. In trying to hold at Kherson the German Army lost 63,000 men. Its capture gave the Russians an important port on the Black Sea. Below are General Nikolai Vatutin's men in the Ukraine.
Gains made by the Russians in seven months
March 30, 1944
THE TIDE OF BATTLE CHANGES
The startling reversal in the war on the eastern front is illustrated by this map. As the fifth year of the war got under way, the Nazis were firmly intrenched in Russia, (black line) and within striking distance of Russia's sources of oil in the Caucasus. At the end of March (white line) the Red Army was heading south into Rumania, toward Ploesti, source of one-third of Germany's oil supply. In the north the Russians were ready to close in on Finland.
Vesuvius puts on a show for the G.I.'s
March, 1944
A FREE SHOW AT NAPLES
While the fighting during the latter part of March on the Italian front had simmered down to patrol skirmishes and artillery duels, soldiers of the Allied Armies had a chance to get acquainted with some sights which had been only lessons in geography to the majority of them. Here is a night photograph of Mount Vesuvius in eruption, red hot lava streaming down the mountain and an accumulation of static electricity cracking over the fiery crater of the world famous volcano, which rises from the eastern edge of the Bay of Naples, about seven miles from the city proper. The soldiers were able to ascend to-the mouth of the crater by the old wire rope railway.
Men with a country return to it
March, 1944
"THIS IS MY OWN, MY NATIVE LAND"
Like a protective cloak, "Old Glory" leans out from the mast of a tug to wave over the repatriated Americans returning to their homeland after two years in war-torn countries, while below, some of the ship's 663 repatriates line the rails of the Swedish Diplomatic Exchange ship as she proceeded up New York Harbor toward her berth. This was the third trip of the former luxury liner, which traveled both ways under safe conduct from all the belligerents. The first exchange was made with Japan in the Spring of 1942 and then the Gripsholm lay in the Hudson River for a year before her next trip to return Nationals of other countries to their homeland and bring back Americans to the United States.
The Tirpitz feels the Barracuda's bite
April, 1944
ATTACK ON THE "TIRPITZ"
On April 3 a force of "Barracudas" from a British aircraft carrier made two very successful attacks on the German battleship "Tirpitz" in Altenfjord, where she was undergoing repairs after being torpedoed by British midget submarines. The first force of bombers scored hits near the bridge and the second on the after-turret, amidships and on the forecastle. The damage was severe enough to put the "Tirpitz" out of action for many months. Top, "Barracuda" bombers approach Altenfjord. Bottom, flames and smoke pour from the wounded "Tirpitz."
Russians push forward in Rumania
April, 1944
PRESSING EVER FORWARD
Late in March the Red Army entered Rumanian territory for the first time in the war. Above Cossack guardsmen are passing through an unnamed Rumanian village in the foothills of the Carpathians. In the picture below, Russian troops are crossing a bridge designed by Red Army engineers. It can be hastily put in place and is difficult to see by enemy airmen.
Box score on a raid on Dutch New Guinea
April 2, 1944
WE HIT, THE JAPANESE RUN
Members of a Pacific fleet aircraft carrier crew watch the painting of new Japanese flags on their carrier, signifying Japanese planes shot down in combat. This picture was made during the fleet's operation against Japan's Hollandia Base in conjunction with General Kenny's softening up of the foe in New Guinea. Landings followed later in the month. The "box score" is a true reflection of the superiority over the Japanese of American carrier-borne aircraft.
The Japanese strike at Burma
April, 1944
ACTION IN THE BURMA THEATRE
Late in March the Japanese made a thrust from Burma into India, their immediate object the city of Imphal, thirty-five miles over the border, which the Japanese cut off from surface contact with its sources of supply. Allied air superiority, however, made contact by plane easy. In this picture, Major General Chennault directs operations at his command post during a Japanese air raid near the border.
Along the new supply route to China
April, 1944
THE LEDO ROAD SPRINGS UP
Troops of the U.S. Army service forces extended their lines of supply by foot from Assam in Eastern India, across the Northern Burma border, toward the heart of China, temporarily in the grip of the Japanese. This extension was called the Ledo Road. In some places U.S. Army engineers blasted the road out of the hillsides. In others they cut and hacked a highway through the lush green jungles, bridging rivers, streams and chasms. The men who built this road started from scratch, working from maps more than twenty years old, but the road continued to push steadily toward its terminus, which, according to some of the signs along it, is Tokio. Here is a new river bridge in India. As an integral part of the Ledo Road this bridge was expected to figure in future United Nations plans to retake Burma and reopen the supply line to China. For many months the Chinese had been drilling with the aid of an American military organization called the Y Force and shortly were to swarm across the Salween and head into the mountains toward Burma, to tie up with General Stilwell's men who had been building the Ledo Road as they advanced.
Prelude to invasion
April, 1944
SOFTENING UP THE REICH
In April the American and British air assault on the "European Fortress" was at full height. At night the huge British "Lancasters" would feel their way through the Channel fog and dump their loads on enemy occupied territory. At daybreak American "flying fortresses", protected by fighter planes, would sally forth and try their precision bombing technique on specified targets. This map is marked with 600 mile radii which give a conception of the areas effectively bombed from the three Allied points, England, Italy and Russia. While by far the preponderance of the bomb loads originated in England, the Allies experimented with shuttle bombing during the later stages. A plane would leave England, drop bombs on Germany and land at a Russian base. After refueling, it would take off from the Russian base and land in Italy, bombing the Ploesti oil center enroute. The plane might next return directly to England, bombing occupied France on the way, or repeat the initial trip in reverse. The bombing of Hitler's fortress was no haphazard matter, but a carefully designed plan to liquidate his industrial and communication centers. All of the spots indicated on the map as being bombed were blasted for specific reasons. To the efforts of the Allied bombers can be attributed much of the success of the invasion that followed two months later.
Beachcombing for hidden death
April 1, 1944
DANGEROUS WORK
Two soldiers of an engineering battalion use their bayonets to prod a beach in the Nettuno area of the Anzio beachhead for hidden Teller mines. A third soldier with an electrical mine detector precedes them. In all sections from which the Germans had been driven, hundreds of these hidden mines had been left behind. For a time Allied casualties from contact with these hidden machines were very heavy, until trained men, such as seen above, were detailed to handle them.
The Reds recover Odessa
April 10, 1944
THE GREAT BLACK SEA PORT IS RUSSIAN AGAIN
On Monday, April 10, General Malinovsky's 3rd Ukraine Army stormed into Odessa, seventh largest city of Russia. Since 1941 it had been occupied by the Nazis, chiefly composed of Rumanian troops who had changed the name of the city to "Antonescu" after their puppet premier. Above, victorious Red Army soldiers are seen moving into the city past the famous opera house which suffered little damage. Most of the destruction wrought by the retreating Germans was to the port installations along the waterfront as indicated in the photo below.
The China and Burma campaigns
April, May, 1944
THE BATTLEFIELDS OF ASIA
In the primordial mountains and jungles of Burma the Allied campaign, which had been proceeding at snail's pace for months, suddenly sprang ahead by leaps. The Chinese opened a new offensive across the Salween River toward Burma; General Stilwell's troops pounced on the Myitkyina airfield and the British were pushing the Japanese back from Kohima and Imphal, although their drive for Akyab had been slowed up considerably.
A modern army rises in China
April, 1944
TAKING A SALUTE IN A JEEP
A regiment of Chinese soldiers, trained under the command of Lieutenant General Stilwell, is reviewed by General Hu (standing in the first jeep) and other American and Chinese officers. This photo was taken at the conclusion of their training period, and just before they were to go into action in an effort to stem the Japanese drive which was gaining momentum in Northern Burma. How successful they were is indicated on the map on page 1232.
A King decides to retire
April 12, 1944
VICTOR EMMANUEL QUITS,
BUT DOES NOT ABDICATE
The King of Italy, since 1900, announced on April 12, his "final and irrevocable decision" to withdraw from the Italian throne on the day that the Allies entered Rome and to appoint his son, Crown Prince Umberto, Prince of Piedmont, as "lieutenant general of the realm." Technically, Victor Emmanuel remained king even after liberation of Rome, but lived as a plain citizen and exercised no power. The powers were assumed by Umberto, shown above.
Japanese retreat in New Britain
April 14, 1944
THE ENEMY PUSHED BACK
Although making headway in Burma, the Japanese seemed to have lost some of their do-or-die spirit on the Pacific front. They made a voluntary withdrawal of considerable extent on New Britain, abandoning their bases in Gasmata and Cape Hoskins, leaving four-fifths of the island to the Allies and retired to the vicinity of Rabaul. This move brought particular cheer to Australia, for New Britain was the principal offensive base for the whole area in the days when Japan was advancing and was a real threat to the British Commonwealth. Now Rabaul had dropped to a status little better than that of Bataan. In this picture a 5,800 ton Japanese freighter, 385 feet long, lies on the bottom off a beach at Vunapope, south of Rabaul. Enemy supplies, piled on the beach, include food and ammunition. The evenly spaced trees of the cocoanut plantation form an interesting background for this impromptu supply dump, one of several used by the enemy since Simpson Harbor at Rabaul was made untenable by constant bombing by Allied land and sea planes. With their hold on New Britain slipping, the Japanese were gradually losing control of the Bismarck Archipelago which they had gained rapidly and at little cost during the early stages of the war. Loss of this chain of islands would inevitably mean the end of Japanese hopes in the far South Pacific, hopes that had seemed so bright in 1942 when the United States was fighting with a skeleton navy and no air force.
Air power meets sea power in the South Pacific
April 14, 1944
BAD NEWS FOR THE JAPANESE
This photograph, snapped at the moment of what appears to be a meeting of sea and air power, was made during a momentous D-Day in the South Pacific theater of operations. The ships in the air are B-25 bombers en route to blast Japanese airdromes at Rabaul. The ships on the sea are an American invasion convoy speeding toward the Green Islands.
Reinforcements for Anzio
April, 1944
ON THEIR WAY TO A BEACHHEAD
Veteran troops of the United States Army who took part in the invasion of North Africa are shown aboard an LCI (Landing Craft, Infantry) on their way to an LST (Landing Ship, Tanks) for the journey to the Allied beachhead at Anzio, just below Rome.
Off to the invasion of Hollandia
April 22, 1944
MAKING A FURTHER STRIDE AGAINST JAPAN
Climaxing three weeks of aerial bombardment, during which 1,500 tons of bombs were dropped, thousands of American troops landed in Netherlands New Guinea in three sectors on April 22, 1944, thus cutting off an estimated 60,000 Japanese soldiers defending the Pacific island. This official U.S. Navy photograph depicts troops clambering up the sides of a destroyer-transport (a World War I destroyer converted into a fast troopship) for the trip to Hollandia. There our invading forces found little Japanese opposition and moved quickly inland to seize airfields.
The seizure of Hollandia
April 22, 1944
MEN AND EQUIPMENT COME ASHORE
In the picture at top, heavily-loaded LSTs (landing ships, tank) hug the beach of Tanahmerah Bay as part of the massive operation which swept to immediate success against minor opposition, seizing three airfields and quelling all resistance within five days. In the picture below, a truck convoy, just off the LSTs, lines up along the beachhead.
MacArthur lands at Hollandia
April 23, 1944
THE GENERAL COMES ASHORE
General MacArthur and his staff were "in" at the Hollandia landings. Here they are seen coming ashore in a landing craft on the beach at Aitape, New Guinea. The presence of the high ranking officers at these Pacific landings did a lot to bolster the morale of the men. MacArthur was noted for his habit of appearing on the actual combat field at an early hour, soon after the beachheads had been established, to supervise the operations.
The infantry moves ahead on Hollandia
April 22, 1944
OUR TROOPS ADVANCE
By-passing the Japanese strongholds of Wewak and Madang, U.S. Army troops transported and aided by the planes and ships of a vast U.S. Navy task force, "leap frogged" 500 miles in the South Pacific to land in the Hollandia area of Dutch New Guinea on April 22, 1944. The action marked the first major juncture of the Nimitz-MacArthur forces, and was the debut of the Pacific Fleet in South Pacific waters—the ripples being felt as far west as Tokio. The town of Hollandia, a coastal town which had a pre-war population of several hundred natives and a few white persons, was so unimportant that ships called there only once a month during peace-time. After taking it over the Japanese had turned it into an air outpost guarding their three thousand miles of conquest in the Netherlands Indies. The American amphibious expedition which descended on Hollandia was the strongest yet employed in the southwest Pacific theater. American forces were prepared to encounter thousands of Japanese defenders, but the landing proved to be an anti-climax. The beaches were strewn with enemy supplies—piles of rice, crates of food, full gasoline drums, even airplane engines—but no Japanese. Farther inland there were a few enemy machine-gun nests, which were quickly overcome by our infantrymen who are shown moving forward in parade formation, many with guns slung on their shoulders.
The men of MacArthur push ahead on Hollandia
April 23, 1944
INFANTRYMEN MOVE UP ON NEW GUINEA
Filtering through the marshes and pouring on toward the Hollandia airstrip, these men of an infantry regiment have just come ashore from invasion barges. Within a few days all enemy resistance in the area ended and the retreating Japanese troops were being cut down by heavy air attack.
Mortar fire sears Italian night
April, 1944
SHADOWS OF BATTLE
Weird patterns of brilliance break the dense blackness of the Italian night as Canadian mortar experts lay down a concentration of fire. Allied commandos, in action during this period, destroyed newly constructed coastal fortifications along the Italian Riviera, during the lull in ground operations on both sectors of the 5th and 8th Army fronts. The mortar gun, easily transported, was one of the favorite weapons of the fast moving commandos.
Back from a raid on Truk
April 30, 1944
STRONGHOLD RAIDED AGAIN
The last two days of April brought bad news to the Japanese occupants of Truk as an American task force visited the base, wiped out all but one of the defending planes and devoted a second day to smashing the ground installations. In this picture, the turret gunner of a carrier-based torpedo bomber inspects the hole in the tail of his plane made by anti-aircraft fire over the island.
Target for any day
May 1. 1944
APPROPRIATE BAIT
In the picture at top, two British soldiers are shown as they peer from the window of a building in Cassino where they hung a cartoon of Adolf Hitler in an effort to draw fire so that the enemy would reveal his position. In the picture below, British snipers in a farmhouse on the outskirts of Camerlle, near Salerno, send their bullets winging toward the foe during an attack on the enemy holding the heights on each side of the defile north of Vietri.
Crossroads of conquest
May 2, 1944
REBUILDING KWAJALEIN
An aerial oblique of newly-conquered Kwajalein Island in the heart of the Marshalls group reveals how the tremendous U.S. Navy task force—part of which can be seen anchored off shore—is rebuilding the shell-shattered base. Rows of tents house Seabees, whose laborious and skillful efforts have already partly erased the pock-marks of war on this atoll. On Kwajalein, as on other conquered Pacific isles, the Seabees accomplished wonders.
Spies and wounded on the China front
May 1, 1944
TWO SIDES OF WAR
In the picture at top, a civilian suspected of giving aid and information to the Japanese in the Salween River sector is questioned by a Chinese colonel at division headquarters. Below, a wounded Chinese soldier is being carried across the Salween River for medical treatment by American medical officers of the Y-Force, attached to Chinese Expeditionary Forces headquarters.
Invasion portents
May, 1944
D DAY DRAWS NEARER
As the month of May opened signs increased that the great invasion of the Continent was not far off. The Allied air offensive was devoted almost exclusively to tactical targets—that is the type of bombing which precedes the assault by not too long a span of time. (The second picture is a good example—the bombing of a railroad bridge in Northern France.) The Germans were making all manner of frantic preparations, shifting troops to the Atlantic Wall and trying to quiet the Nazi frenzy at home. Finally hundreds of thousands of Allied troops were on the alert in England and, as shown in the first picture, where an American adds a touch of G.I. humor to the invasion bonnets of an infantry unit, they were still able to relax and see the humorous side of the war before pushing off for the shores of France.
Even life in the Pacific has peace-time problems
May, 1944
NO "TRUCK" WITH TRUCKS
The sign on Tarawa, in the Gilbert Islands, captured by American forces in November, 1943, suggests a new low boiling point among residents of this tent city when they sight one of the roaring monsters which haul supplies about the captured island to the accompaniment of horns and dust, disturbing the after-battle quiet of this peaceful scene. Compare this photo with those taken in November during the battle for the beachhead.
The Allies open up in Italy
May 9, 1944
THE LULL IS ENDED
At 11 p.m. Thursday, May 9, Allied guns opened the heaviest artillery barrage yet seen in the Mediterranean theatre. Forty minutes later the guns lifted their range to allow tens of thousands of American and British troops to surge forward against the German Gustav line. The attack was concentrated in the twenty-five mile west coast sector from the Tyrrhenian Sea inland to Cassino and was the fourth Allied attempt to smash the Gustav line, the last previous one having been at Cassino nearly two months ago. In these pictures are some of the Nazis captured during the first two days of the drive and, as shown in the bottom picture, many of them were mere boys.
The men who led the march on Rome
May, 1944
ALLIED GENERALS IN ITALY
Shown here are the men chiefly responsible for the strategy and operations during the summer offensive in Italy. While these photos were taken some months prior to the start of the drive, they show the commanders in characteristic poses. Above is General Sir Harold R. L. G. Alexander, commander of all Allied forces in Italy, and Lieutenant General Mark W. Clark, commander of the American Fifth Army. Second, left, is General Alphonse Pierre Juin, commander of the French troops in the battle for Cassino. Second, right, is Lieutenant General Sir Oliver Leese, who succeeded General Montgomery as head of the British Eighth Army after the latter was transferred to England to prepare for the invasion of France. Prior to this, General Leese had a command under Montgomery during the march from El Alamein to Tunis in the North African campaign. These commanders guided their armies in the combined drive on Rome.
The siege of Sevastopol ends
May 9, 1944
BACK IN RUSSIAN HANDS
The Red Army took this fortress city of the Crimea after a siege of twenty-four days. In 1942 it took the Germans 250 days to wrest the same city from the Russians. Moscow reported 111,000 of the enemy killed or captured. Above, a Soviet tank, with flags flying, passes along once-proud Lenin Street whose buildings have been reduced to a rubble. Below, a woman resident of the city describes to members of the Red Army her experiences during the Nazi occupation.
The Gurkhas move up with the Allies
May 10, 1944
MORE TROUBLE FOR THE NAZIS
The Gurkhas, members of the British Commonwealth of Nations, are by nature excellent soldiers, famous for their ferocity and fearlessness in action. Although excellent marksmen they are in their element in close quarters and can sever a man's head with one blow from their native weapon, the Kukri. They are much feared by the Germans, who remember their exploits in the last war. In this picture two of the Gurkhas, part of the 5th Regiment, attached to the 8th Army, are shown on the alert for Nazi soldiers in a shell-torn building on the Gustav Line.
Anti-aircraft guns in action in Italy
May 14, 1944
KEEPING THE NAZIS OUT OF THE AIR
The skies around Cassino are bright with the light of Allied gunfire as the Allied Fifth Army battles for possession of the important Italian town. In this picture 3.7 anti-aircraft gun crews send their arms into action at night as the Battle for Rome opened in earnest. Preparation for the offensive had been under way for a month or more. The British 8th Army under Lieutenant General Sir Oliver Leese, which had been on the Adriatic, was moved around to the Cassino front and the American Fifth Army, under Lieutenant General Mark W. Clark was put in charge of the Gaeta section near the coast.
Largest "loudspeaker" in Italy
May 16, 1944
ALLIED BROADCAST TO THE ITALIANS
With a shattering roar, and with the concussion raising clouds of dust, a 240 mm. howitzer speaks its piece, "somewhere in Italy." The white line leading from the breach, off to the right of the picture, is the lanyard used to fire the gun. This is the largest mobile gun in use by the U.S. Army in Italy, and was one of the guns used to end German resistance at Cassino and to break through the Gustav Line as the Allies started their great drive to free the Eternal City.
The flag marches on in the Pacific
May 16, 1944
WAKDE ISLAND FALLS TO THE ALLIES
Hitting the beach under a hail of enemy fire, U.S. Army soldiers (top) take cover behind fallen trees, driftwood and whatever other protection they can find as they storm Wakde Island. Behind them flies the Stars and Stripes, waving in the breeze from the stern of a damaged landing craft. In the picture below, other men of the 41st Division hit the beach from their landing craft. The island soon fell under the determined attack, providing the Allies with a strategic airfield 110 miles farther west than the previous outpost at Hollandia, which had been seized in April. The beauty of Wakde was that the Japanese had constructed a coral-surfaced bomber air field on the island, which was to prove a great asset to the Americans.
Infantry hits the beach at Sarmi
May 17, 1944
IMPORTANT GAIN IN NEW GUINEA
LCI's (Landing craft, Infantry) reach the beach in the second wave of the invasion of Sarmi, Dutch New Guinea, and a Coast Guard combat photographer, coming in with the first wave, was there to catch this striking beachhead picture. Stretcher bearers are shown going down the ramps and plunging through the surf in the amphibious assault which resulted in the capture of Wakde Island and Sarmi in a two-day campaign. This gave the Allies a base 110 miles further west than the previous outpost at Hollandia, which had been seized late in April. This new stride in the Pacific brought the Allies within 1000 miles of the Philippines.
The Allies leave a calling card at Surabaya
May 17, 1944
AND THEN THERE WAS NONE
A few minutes before the picture at the top was taken, the only oil refinery on the island of Java was producing gasoline for the Japanese. Carrier-based bombers from a combined Allied task force chose it as their target during the successful surprise attack on the former Dutch naval base. In the bottom picture smoke funnels up from exploding bombs on docks and warehouses.
Cassino falls to the Allies
May 18, 1944
VICTORY FOR THE ALLIES
The final battle for Cassino began May 16—this was the town which the Nazis had held since January through the fiercest fighting of the whole Italian campaign and through the great Allied air attack on March 15. This time the tactics were different. The Poles fought their way around Cassino to the north; the British units fought their way around from the south. Seeing the trap the Germans counter-attacked furiously, but by Thursday morning, the 18th, the British and Poles had joined to complete the encirclement. By this time it was too late for all the Germans to get away. More than 1,500 of Marshal Kesselring's crack parachute troops were taken prisoners and enough material to fit out two artillery divisions was seized. Battered buildings form a backdrop for the above picture of the town as it appeared on March 15, after the terrific bombardment of the town and its ancient Benedictine Abbey which has been pictured in another part of this volume.
Cossacks in the Ukraine
May, 1944
REST HOUR FOR MAN AND HORSE
Along the second Ukrainian front, in the foothills of the Carpathians Don Cossack guardsmen are shown resting. These traditional warriors played an important role in action in this sector, despite the emphasis the teachings of World War II place on mechanized equipment. In the center is the ubiquitous Red Army nurse shown bandaging a wounded trooper. The guardsman in the foreground is apparently testing the keenness of his sword blade.
Clark leads beachhead forces to junction
May 25, 1944
A HANDSHAKE—AND ANZIO IS HISTORY
American Fifth Army patrols, advancing rapidly through the enemy-evacuated Pontine marshes made contact with patrols from the Anzio beachhead early on the morning of Thursday, May 25. This climaxed a dramatic two-week, sixty-mile advance and established in Southern Italy a continuous 150-mile front, in the shape of a huge arc, which stretched from the Adriatic Sea above Ortona to the Tyrrhenian seacoast at a point twenty miles south of Rome. The original junction was made early in the morning when two American officers met on the shore road, seven miles below the beachhead line and shook hands. In this picture, Lieutenant General Mark W. Clark and his forces foot it down the road a little below the Anzio beachhead to effect the junction with the main front forces advancing toward the beachhead. After the junction the combined forces marched on toward Rome, driving the fleeing Germans before them. The merger of the American forces closed the fissure which had existed since January when the Anzio beachhead was established. At that time it was hoped that the landing in the north would serve to outflank the Nazis with the result of a quick capture of Rome. Unfortunately, Nazi opposition proved stronger than the early battle for the beachhead indicated, and it was not until the above date, aided by good weather and complete air superiority, that the Allies were able to consolidate their lines. After the consolidation, the Allies began to move on Rome, although they still had to fight for every inch of ground.
Teamwork in the landing at Biak
May 27, 1944
JOINT OPERATION IN THE PACIFIC
Amphibious teamwork in action, pictured by Navy combat photographers, as ships' guns clear the way for landings on tiny, strategic Biak Island in the Netherlands Indies. In this picture, moving down the beach at Biak, ahead of advancing U.S. forces, a destroyer shoots up a Japanese ammunition dump, shown flaming from direct hits by the fleet.
Biak, coming ashore after the softening up
May 27, 1944
ANOTHER PACIFIC VICTORY
In the first picture, "Alligators" are lined up on the beach of Biak Island in the Schouten Group of the Southwest Pacific, while, on the left, men and material are pouring ashore in the second phase of the amphibious landing. In the second picture troops of the 41st Division unload from LCI's onto a Japanese jetty. Possession of Biak brought MacArthur one step nearer to the Philippines.
Moving against the Adolf Hitler line
June 1, 1944
CANADIAN TANKS IN ACTION
Long columns of carefully camouflaged Canadian tanks move up to the front in support of Indian troops driving against the Adolf Hitler Line, last strong defense of the Germans south of Rome. The first picture was taken on the Cassino front where Canadian tanks played a spectacular role. In the second picture a Canadian tank races along to join the attack on St. Angelo.
A Liberator goes up in smoke
June 1, 1944
DOWNED IN THE BATTLE FOR ROME
When this B-24 Liberator bomber of the 15th Air Force crashed at a field in southern Italy, ground crew men rushed up and pulled the plane's crew to safety. No one was killed. Shortly afterwards the plane's gas tanks, containing 100 octane gasoline, exploded. Emergency crews could do nothing to save the plane, but worked to prevent the spread of the fire to other machines. The crew man's protective gesture of arm over face gives an idea of the tremendous heat generated.
Action and shut-eye on the Italian front
June 3, 1944
INFANTRYMEN IN TWO ROLES
It's on the alert now—and double time, as this infantry patrol, one of the many that made possible the victory in Italy by feeling out the enemy and discovering his defensive strength, hits the ditch and begins to spread out on its mission to wipe Nazis out of a farmhouse on the Fifth Army front; below, worn out this G.I. lies asleep on the roadside outside Velletri.
Ready to enter the Eternal City
June 4, 1944
THE CONQUERING LIBERATORS ARRIVE
One of the Fifth Army divisions pauses on a bridge in Rome, awaiting the signal to enter the main part of the Italian capital. The commanding general's jeep is parked at the head of the column. Self-propelled guns, tanks, snipers and road blocks impeded the progress of the Allied troops as they pushed through the suburbs toward the center of the city along the Via Casilina, the famous Roman boulevard.
Cheering crowds welcome General Clark to Rome
June 4, 1944
THE ETERNAL CITY IS FREED
As Lieutenant General Mark W. Clark rides through a street in Rome in his jeep, an Italian girl clasps his hand, while other liberated Romans give the V-for-Victory sign. With General Clark are his driver, Technical Sergeant Holden, Major General Alfred M. Gruenther, his chief of staff, and Major General Geoffrey Keyes, commander of the 2nd corps of the Fifth Army. The three stars on the jeep signify its assignment to General Clark.
Italian kisses greet American troops
June 4, 1944
A REAL ROMAN WELCOME
Hundreds of thousands of the people of Rome, half delirious with enthusiasm, surged like an immense flood into the broad streets and spacious squares of the Eternal City to greet the men of the Allied 5th Army as conquering liberators and to give them the heartiest welcome that an Allied Army had received up to that time. Here a G.I. is being embraced by civilians who were once more happy now that Nazis had been driven from the city.
Passing the glory that was Rome
June 4, 1944
THE CITY IS SPARED
Contributing to the gala spirit which marked this historic day was the fact that neither Allied bombs nor Nazi demolitions had impaired the grandeur and beauty of Rome or touched with war's destructive hand the ancient monuments and temples. Here a battalion of infantrymen pass the ancient Roman Colosseum, standing since the early days of Christianity.
Welcomed to Rome by a Roman
June 5, 1944
A HOMEY GREETING TO THE VICTORS
As the Fifth Army entered Rome, Italian citizens were profuse in their greetings to the conquering Americans as amid kisses and tears our troops rolled along the streets hard after the retreating Germans. In this picture an American private is embraced and kissed by an overjoyed, aged, Italian woman as youngsters and soldiers enjoy the scene.
Press conference and church
June 5, 1944
THE GENERAL GIVES THANKS
Newspaper correspondents crowd around Lieutenant General Mark W. Clark, commander of the 5th Army, as he holds his first press conference in Rome. In the foreground are other officers of the Allied army. In the picture below, General Clark kneels in prayer at Santa Maria Degli Angeli Church in Rome. The Fifth Army commander gave thanks for the success of his fighters in the Holy City and prayed for victory—speedy and complete.
German prisoners in the Piazza del Popolo
June 5, 1944
UNKEMPT AND YOUNG NAZIS LEFT BEHIND
An American officer of the Fifth Army questions a group of German soldiers in front of a barbed wire barricade which the Allies erected in the Piazza del Popolo in the center of the city. The lion in the background is one of the four water-spouting lions which forms the base of the Obelisk erected by Augustus in 10 B.C., to mark the subjugation of Egypt.
Roman citizens throw off a yoke
June 6, 1944
ANTI-FASCISTS GET THEIR DAY IN THE SUN
Anti-Fascists bring in Fascist leaders and sympathizers for trial after the Allies had marched into the Italian capital. This was the first time that the people who had opposed Mussolini and his policies throughout the years of his rule had a chance to deal with the men who had tyrannized them ever since the Black Shirts had taken over the government.
A new face on Mussolini's balcony
June 5, 1944
JUST LIKE IL DUCE
An American soldier of the triumphant 5th Army imitates Benito Mussolini on the balcony of the Palazzo Venezia. It was from this vantage point that the ex-dictator used to harangue the populace in the days when he was ruler of Italy. The story goes that the American had promised his friends at home that he would pose on the balcony when he got to Rome. He is shown making good, but without the cheering thousands who formerly gaped eagerly from beneath.
The G.I.'s take over a Mussolini project
June 10, 1944
AMUSEMENT FOR THE SOLDIERS IN ROME
Lieutenant General Mark W. Clark, Colonel Guy Gale, in charge of all 5th Army rest centers, and Colonel Chaney L. Berthof are seen leaving the stadium of the Foro Mussolini, where General Clark gave a brief speech dedicating the area as the 5th Army rest center. This great amphitheatre was equipped for track meets and other outdoor recreations and was originally erected for the purpose of promoting Fascism's athletic program.
D DAY--France's day of liberation
June 6, 1944
THE GERMAN ATLANTIC WALL HAS BEEN BREACHED
Early in the morning of Tuesday, June 6, thousands of American, Canadian and British soldiers, under cover of the greatest air and sea bombardment of history, broke through the "impregnable" perimeter of Germany's "European Fortress" in the first phase of the invasion and liberation of the continent. Despite underwater obstacles and beach defenses, which in some areas extended for more than 1,000 yards inland on the Normandy beachhead, the landings were made with a minimum of casualties. Most of the German coastal batteries in the invasion area were silenced by 10,000 tons of bombs and by shelling from 640 naval ships. The two naval task forces that led the invasion were commanded by Rear Admiral Sir Philip Vian, who won fame while commanding the destroyer Cossack early in the war, and Rear Admiral Alan Goodrich Kirk of the United States Navy. The two naval forces included one 16-inch gun battleship, the British Warspite; an American battleship, the Nevada, a veteran of Pearl Harbor; the U. S. cruisers Augusta and Tuscaloosa; the British cruisers, Mauritius, Belfast, Black Prince and Orion; and shoals of destroyers flying the Stars and Stripes and the White Ensign. Steaming through the English Channel, swept by 200 British minesweepers, the men o' war escorted thousands of landing craft, transports and assault craft bearing General Sir Bernard L. Montgomery's landing forces to the beaches on the Cherbourg peninsula and other points along the Normandy coast. The large air-borne forces that were dropped and landed in the night were already assembling behind the Atlantic Wall as the first troops (some of whom are seen in this picture) scrambled up the beaches. Dawn was the climax of the first phase of the invasion. Wave after wave of American bombers took up the task of flattening the German defenses and silencing guns—the battle to liberate Europe from the Nazi oppressors was on in earnest.
The Generals observe a landing
June 6, 1944
A BEACHHEAD IS STORMED
In the first picture, on the deck of a warship off the coast of France, Major General Ralph Royce, left, deputy commander of the 9th Air Force; Lieutenant General Omar N. Bradley, commander of the American ground forces and the "boss," General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander of the invasion forces, watch American assault troops land on a Normandy beachhead (below).
The Canadians land and move on Caen
June 6, 1944
THE FOE MOVES UP FOR THE BATTLE
A camouflaged German tank moving to its battle station as armored units of the Canadian Army clashed in battle with German Panzer troops in the advance south of Caen, which was to prove a "hard nut" for the Allies to crack. In the second picture, Canadian invaders of the beachheads take time out for some hot food as their landing craft nears shore.
Over the top, 1944 version
June 7, 1944
ALLIED INVASION OF FRANCE
Leaving behind the other troops, taking a breather after gaining the comparative safety offered by a concrete wall. American troops move over the crest of a hill to the interior of Northern France. The other men will shortly follow their buddies over the crest. This picture is reminiscent of trench warfare as practiced in the First World War. Then the infantry was sent "over the top" in waves from series of trenches which were the fox holes of modern war.
First aid for friend and foe
June 7, 1944
BEACHHEAD CASUALTIES
In the picture at top, an American medical officer makes a casualty report on a wounded soldier, while in the picture below, an American medical officer treats a wounded German prisoner on a beachhead gained by United States troops in the early stages of the invasion of France.
Nazi defenses at a low ebb the morning after
June 7, 1944
UNDERWATER OBSTACLES
Ebbing tide of a French Beach reveals a long stretch of skeleton obstructions, erected by the Nazis. At high tide the water veils these structures which are a menace to ship's bottoms, even shallow-draft landing craft. In the foreground are wrecked Allied trucks and tanks—the cost of a victorious D Day.
A Pearl Harbor veteran turns up off France
June 7, 1944
A BATTLEWAGON AIDS THE LANDING PARTIES
Flame and smoke gush from the muzzles of her 14-inch guns as the U.S.S. Nevada pours a hail of death on the Nazi positions along the Normandy beachheads. The Nevada was badly crippled in the Pearl Harbor disaster. She was later repaired and modernized. This photo is the first record of her return to action, and the stories coming from Normandy reveal that she played a vital role in the naval action which supported the invasion.
British and French forces on the beaches
June 7, 1944
MORE ALLIED BEACHHEADS
On the evening of June 6 heavy fighting in the vicinity of Caen demanded a continual flow of reinforcements. Above is shown British infantrymen wading ashore with their bicycles. Below we see units of the French Army returning to fight on the soil of France. This particular force, equipped with American tanks, is the Second French Armored Division under General Jacques LeClerc.
These mines failed Rommel
June 7, 1944
FAIL TO CHECK THE ALLIED ADVANCE
When the Canadians leaped ashore on the beaches of France on D Day, they drove the enemy so hard and fast and the engineers worked so efficiently that these German mines, left behind to hinder the Allied advance, failed to explode and lie harmlessly on the beach. A soldier is removing the detonator from one of these weapons of death, a tricky operation which required considerable training.
Thrilling rescue in the English channel
June 7, 1944
DISASTER AVERTED
Survivors of a sunk LCVP (Landing craft, vehicle, personnel) off the coast of France come safely ashore in a rubber life raft, unhurt except for a very heavy and salty ducking. Below, clutching a carton of his favorite cigarettes in his good hand, a wounded U. S. Army paratrooper is helped aboard an LCVP by medical men, bound for a hospital ship and England. These scenes were common during the amphibious operations on the Normandy coast.
At sea and at a bomber base
June 7, 1944
INVASION SIDELIGHTS
In the first picture, Lieutenant General Omar N. Bradley, commanding American ground forces, climbs a Jacobs ladder from a launch to a warship to confer with General Montgomery during the invasion. Note how the Army censor eradicated General Bradley's shoulder patch. In the second picture, pilots of the 8th Air Force are questioned at a flight bomber base in England after their return from France where they supplied the air "umbrella" for the invasion landings.
Reinforcing the beachheads in Normandy
June 8, 1944
BOUND FOR NEW ADVENTURE
In the first picture, United States soldiers crowd into every inch of space aboard this LCT, which made continuous runs from transports to the Allied Beachhead on the Normandy Coast. Below: "Hitting the beach" along with Army troops, members of a U. S. Navy beach battalion dig their fox holes for their first night ashore on a Normandy beachhead.
High and dry on a Normandy beachhead
June 8, 1944
"LAND BASED" LST's IN NORMANDY
Left high and dry on a beach in Normandy by receding tide, these Navy LST's (landing ships, tanks) find their anchors temporarily useless, but the unloading of men and material for the great assault continued.
The beachhead fighting takes its toll
June 8, 1944
DEATH ON A NORMANDY BEACHHEAD
While casualties were far lighter than pre-invasion estimates, the picture above gives evidence of the high cost of the landings in Normandy. Below, Americans rest in a milk house which was part of a farm they had just cleared of German snipers. Note the eagerness of some to gain a few moments rest while comrades were on the alert for a counter-attack.
The quick and the dead on a Normandy field
June 9, 1944
COMING UP FOR REVENGE
American paratroopers move warily through a field near Carentan, France, passing members of their own outfit who had fallen victims to the Nazi snipers. While thousands of Allied troops were dropped behind enemy lines in this manner, our losses were very small in comparison with the goals achieved. The paratroopers proved invaluable in cutting communications and preparing the way for the forces storming the beaches.
Aid for the wounded on the Normandy front
June 9, 1944
CASUALTIES ON THE SANDS OF FRANCE
In the first picture, soldiers of an American medical detachment administer first aid to a group of wounded soldiers who received their wounds during the initial attack on the Cherbourg Peninsula. In the second picture, members of a U. S. Navy beach battalion, moving "on the double" dive for the protection offered by a ditch as a Nazi plane which broke through the Allied umbrella, swoops down to strafe the shore "somewhere in Normandy." Few enemy planes got through, and those that did were not able to do much damage because of the opposition by Allied planes.
Two roads back from Normandy
June 9, 1944
CASUALTIES AND PRISONERS
Into the dark interior of an LST (Landing Ship, tanks) passes a steady stream of casualties who fell in the Battle for France. In the background, framed by the open bow of the LST, a line of Nazi prisoners marches along another "road back" from the Normandy front. In the initial operations on the Cherbourg Peninsula thousands of Nazi prisoners were taken by the advancing Allies. For the most part they looked very little like what the Allies were led to believe were representative of the "master race". They were returned to England as captives and not as the conquering heroes. To some extent the large numbers of Nazi captives proved an embarrassment to the Allies. Prisoners had to be guarded, fed, and transported to the rear. The Allied transportation facilities were already sorely taxed by the demands of their own men, and the prisoners only added to the problem which would not be eased until the Allies had won a deep water port.
The long trek back to England
June 9, 1944
THE WOUNDED RETURN FROM FRANCE
Two members of a Medical Corps unit help a wounded paratroop officer ashore from an LST at a Port in England. Among the first wounded in the landing on French soil, he will be taken to a military hospital in England. The death toll was minimized by prompt use of blood plasma at field hospitals. The plasma was shipped to France in containers (shown below) equipped with dry ice to keep the plasma at the proper temperature. The blood donated by millions of Americans, was processed in the United States.
Two aspects of the landings in France
June 9, 1944
A LANDING IS EFFECTED
View of a beach which was one of the Allied objectives on the Coast of Normandy. It shows the masses of men and equipment being landed from the various landing craft lying off shore, while barrage balloons dot the sky to protect the Allied landings from the enemy. Below: Casualties rest on their stretchers outside of a field hospital as they await treatment.
Backing up the liberation of France
June 10, 1944
FOOD FOR THE FRAY
In the picture at top, a giant U. S. Army field kitchen, towed by a heavy truck, rolls up the open bow of an LST (landing ship, tank) on its way to the shores of Normandy. In the picture below, tanks come ashore at a beachhead on an unnamed sector of the Normandy coast.
An English sailor visits the U.S. fleet
June 10, 1944
A DISTINGUISHED GUEST OF THE FLEET
Honored guest of the United States Navy, King George VI of Great Britain visited the ships under command of Rear Admiral Alan G. Kirk, USN, commander of the U. S. Task Force operating with His Majesty's Fleet. Admiral Kirk met the King ashore and with him inspected units of the U. S. Navy which played such a great role in the landings. King George's action record dates back to World War I when he fought in the Battle of Jutland.
A truck full of commanders
June 12, 1944
GETTING FIRST-HAND INFORMATION
Less than one week after the initial landings were made, American Army and Navy chiefs paid their first visit to French soil to see the progress of the battles on the beachheads. In this group were, left to right, Rear Admiral Alan G. Kirk, commander U. S. Task Forces; General George C. Marshall, chief of staff; General Henry H. Arnold, commander U. S. Air Forces, who is preparing to lend a hand to General Dwight D. Eisenhower, supreme Allied commander.
The chief of staff visits his troops
June 12, 1944
GETTING FIRST-HAND INFORMATION
General George C. Marshall, Chief of Staff, United States Army, chats with a "G.I. Joe" as his caravan moves along a highway in Northern France. Arriving in London on June 9, the No. 1 man of the United States Army lost no time in getting to the scene of action. Crossing the channel in an American destroyer, General Marshall's party toured the beachheads to the distant accompaniment of exploding mines and artillery fire and several times during his inspection the General left his car to get a closer look on foot. Returning to America a few days later he reported that he had found everything in first class order and was well pleased with the gains made by the Allies.
Chow over, the nurses clean up
June, 1944
GOOD SOLDIERS
A group of U. S. Army nurses, first to land after the vanguard of American troops had established a beachhead somewhere in France, wash their mess kits on the site of their field hospital, located between the beach and the fighting up front. Subjected to the same dangers and hardships as the men whose wounds they dressed, these modern "ladies of the lamp" lived up to the great traditions of their calling. They were doing a great job that equalled the high standards which already had been established in the Pacific, North Africa and Italy.
The northern front in Russia
June, 1944
ACTION ON LAND AND SEA
Fighting against the Finns in Karelia is shown in the action photo at top. While the trooper at right moves forward, a Russian Army nurse attends to the wounds of a fallen comrade. At the bottom a small combat vessel of the Red Banner Baltic fleet is moving into action. Of interest is the 7.62 mm gun in the foreground. This gun and turret is also used on tanks and armored trains.
A big gun falls to the Allies
June, 1944
PRIZE OF WAR
The photograph, at top, taken near Quineville, France, shows heavy reinforced concrete forts of crisbec with large caliber coastal guns that were shattered by Allied air and naval bombardment. In the lower picture Navy men aboard a landing craft keep a sharp lookout on the horizon as they maneuver in the English Channel while awaiting the order to dash for the French coast.
The first French town falls to the Allies
June 12, 1944
CARENTAN IS CAPTURED
The town of Carentan, a key point on the road to Cherbourg, fell to the Americans on June 12, but on the 13th the Nazi counter-attacked and it was not until two days later that the last of the enemy were cleaned out. In this picture a signal corps lineman, his carbine at the ready, looks over potential wire-laying locale as citizens of this Normandy town discuss the deliverance of their homeland after four years occupation.
Cliff dwellers in northern France
June 12, 1944
OUR FLAG IS STILL THERE
An American command post on the cliffs of Northern France bustles with activity as prisoners are hurried down the side of the cliff to waiting ships in the harbor. The American flag on the side of the cliff is protection against these troops being shelled or bombed by their own men. The completeness of the American air umbrella and the absence of German planes made this a "must".
Isigny, after the Americans entered
June 11, 1944
ONCE A THRIVING NORMANDY TOWN
The main street of Isigny after the Americans drove the Germans out, at top, and below, grinning Todt construction workers cheer lustily after they were freed from German domination. These men had been forced into labor battalions, brought from France, and forced to work on defense fortifications after the Germans occupied their homes in Poland and Russia.
A Nazi comes to the end of the road
June 13, 1944
A TOUGH EMPLOYER IS PAID OFF
A group of Frenchmen talk to American soldiers who have just entered this small town in Northern France. The dead German was killed by the Frenchman, right, who was forced to work for the Nazi for $2.00 a week. This Frenchman was one of the many citizens who took up arms in the street fighting as the Allies entered the town and this Nazi is one of three he shot. The audience of G.I.'s and French citizens seem to appreciate his feat.
Preparing to strike against Saipan
June 14, 1944
OFF TO SOFTEN-UP THE MARIANAS
A Grumman Avenger torpedo-bomber takes off from the deck of its carrier to lend its efforts to the blow that preceded the actual invasion of these Central Pacific Islands. This campaign took place from aircraft carriers and lasted for one week. Virtually all the enemy coastal and anti-aircraft batteries on this island were knocked out by bombing and shelling which was on a larger scale than had yet been employed in the Pacific.
A section of the vaunted West Wall
June, 1944
CAPTURED GERMAN PICTURE
When this picture was taken this Nazi was a soldier of Adolf Hitler helping to defend the vaunted West Wall, in front of a barbed wire section of which he is posing. But he never got around to developing the picture as the roll was found by a Canadian soldier in Normandy after the men of the Dominion had cracked the beach defense at this secluded point.
The "Master Race" meets up with its master
June 15, 1944
THE HITLER YOUTH
In the picture above, these youngsters, regulars in Hitler's vast army of the West Wall, look woefully at the photographer while they await entry into a prisoner of war camp on the English side of the channel. In the second picture, Nazi prisoners captured in the battle for France, carry their wounded comrades to beach areas where landing craft sped them out to ships in the English channel for treatment by Allied doctors. In the third picture, seasick Italian prisoners of war loudly bewail their plight to more fortunate fellow-prisoners. The group was captured on the French beachhead by allied troops and were placed aboard the U.S.S. Texas for temporary safekeeping.
England feels the fury of the flying bomb
June 15, 1944.
ON ITS DEADLY MISSION
Somewhat belatedly, on June 15, the Germans unleashed their secret weapon which was supposed to have disrupted the invasion. It looked like an undersize airplane, but had no human being in it. Presumably it was launched from catapults in the Calais area and traveled at high speed to England. (See page 1118 for mechanical details). At the right, one of the planes is shown diving down on an English city, and below, the wreckage of one of the flying bombs has been tagged, "not to be taken away." British authorities preserved every piece of these wrecked weapons to determine the manner in which they were constructed, propelled and controlled.
The flying bomb brings grief to England
June, 1944
A CIVILIAN CASUALTY OF THE SECRET WEAPON
This picture shows the effect of one of the flying bombs that were dropped on England. This elderly man went for a walk while his wife was preparing dinner—a bomb came down when he was at the end of the road. He returned to find his wife dead and his home a pile of rubble. At his feet lies his dog, the only thing to come out of the wreckage alive.
A new air monster hits Japan
June 15, 1944
THE B-29's MAKE THEIR BOW
On Thursday June 15, a new problem came out of the sky of China to terrify the Japanese—B-29s, the largest fighting aircraft ever produced, bombed Yawata, the Pittsburgh of Japan, situated on the island of Kyushu, the southernmost of the Japanese home islands. There at Yawata was the Imperial Iron and Steel Works, which produced one-fifth of Japan's steel. The great planes rained their bombs on the steel works, the Japanese filled the sky with anti-aircraft fire and four of the $1,500,000 bombers were lost. The B-29 is half again as big as the Flying Fortress, which it resembles in design, as shown in picture at top. So formidable are the Superfortresses that a new organization—the 20th air force—was created for them and they were to be regarded as aerial task forces to roam the world wherever most needed. While the raid was the beginning of a military air campaign against Japan's homeland, it probably could not be duplicated at very frequent intervals because of the difficulty of getting gasoline. The fuel, of which the superfortresses require an enormous amount, had to be flown into China from India. The development of the Superfortress opened vast possibilities for the Allies. While it seemed at the time that the bombardment of Japan from Chinese bases was the logical strategy, the rapid acquisition by the United States of island strongholds near the enemy mainland suggested blows from these sources. The Superfortress was ideally suited for Pacific warfare. In the picture below, the Superfortresses are lined up at their airfield prior to taking off.
Superfortress in action
June 15, 1944
A STEEL PLANT GOES UP IN SMOKE
Great clouds of smoke rising from the Showa Steel Works at Anshan, Manchuria, attest to the accuracy of bombs dropped by the superfortresses as they paid a visit to this industrial city on their way back to their base from the raid on Yawata. Flames from the steel works shot 2,000 feet in the air and from a distance of sixty miles the fires could still be seen.
Airborne troops do their part
June, 1944
SOLDIERS OF THE AIR IN ACTION
In the picture at top, American paratroopers, among the first to make successful landings on the continent, hold a Nazi flag captured in a village assault. In the bottom picture Gliders loaded with essential supplies land on a partially completed airfield somewhere in northern France. Despite the steady stream of gliders bringing in men and equipment from England, the work of constructing the airfields went on uninterrupted. Engineers of the 9th Air Force worked fourteen hours a day creating landing fields only a few miles from the coast. These new fields were needed to enable the Allies to take advantage of their decided air superiority.
The leader of the French returns to France
June 14, 1944
ONE LEADER GREETS ANOTHER
Returning to his homeland for the first time since the Germans occupied France, General Charles De Gaulle, right, head of the Free French Forces, is greeted at a Normandy beachhead by General Sir Bernard L. Montgomery, commander of Allied ground forces. In the picture below, General De Gaulle, surrounded by French civilians, strides down the main street of Bayeux on his tour of the Allied beachheads. Unlike other French towns, Bayeux escaped damage. The General's presence in towns and villages of the beachhead gave rise to heart-moving scenes, especially in Isigny, where the populace rushed from their war-battered homes to gaze on the Frenchman who stood as the figurehead of their hopes for a rehabilitated French nation.
Invasion of Saipan
June 16, 1944
A NEW BLOW AT JAPAN
American infantrymen are shown moving inland from the beachhead across a burnt sugar cane field as the invasion of the island of Saipan began. The Saipan campaign was one of the most desperately fought in the Pacific. It lasted from June 16 until July 9, and cost the Americans 10,000 casualties. Saipan was one of the more important islands of the Marianas group, and the Japanese fought desperately to hold it.
French flowers for a dead American
June 17, 1944
HONOR FOR THE DEAD
A French peasant says a prayer as he places a flower on the body of an American soldier killed in front of his home as the Allies pushed ahead on the Normandy front.
AIRBORNE TROOPS MOVE UP
U. S. Airborne infantrymen passing through a liberated French village on their way to try to establish contact with the fast retreating forces of General Rommel.
Navy men study a Nazi "beetle"
June 17, 1944
SEEING WHAT MAKES IT TICK
Undertaking a wartime pursuit of "entomology," U. S. Navy men take apart a Nazi "beetle"—a miniature tank loaded with explosives—to see what makes it tick. First used at Anzio, the robot vehicles were sent forward against the Allied lines with a mechanism timing them to be exploded at a distance. Allied marksmen in most cases picked off the "beetles" while they were still too distant to do much damage.
Battlefront pacifier
June 17, 1944
THE INNOCENT SUFFER
Her head bandaged and her face swollen, this little French baby is given candy by U. S. Army medical corpsmen to assuage her grief and terror. D Day and the days following meant many hours of terror for residents of the Normandy coast.
At a village pump in Normandy
June, 1944
PEACEFUL SCENE AFTER THE ALLIES CAME
Typical of many villages in Normandy right after the American occupation is this view of the village square in one of the communities liberated in the Allied advance. Two neatly-dressed girls fill their giant water pitchers at the village pump, while U. S. soldiers "look the town over" as they keep a vigil against snipers.
Traffic is heavy in the Channel
June, 1944
REINFORCEMENTS FOR THE BEACHHEAD
As thousands of Allied naval craft ferry to and from the beachhead in Northern France, a B-26 Marauder of the U. S. Army 9th Air Force took this picture while enroute to bomb railroad yards at Avranches, France. One of the reasons for the early success of the invasion was the fact that the Allies had complete control of the water from England to France. Recognition of the importance of control of the seas was one of the things that Hitler overlooked.
U.S. troops find desolation on Saipan
June 17, 1944
WRECKAGE AND RUINS
Two American infantrymen probe the ruins of a demolished Japanese sugar refinery blasted by bombs and naval gunfire prior to the landings. The conquest of Saipan put both Tokio and the Philippines within distance of Liberator planes, not to mention the superfortresses which would find these places only a "mashie shot" away. This campaign brought the Americans more than 1,000 miles west of the previous outposts in the Marshall Islands.
Japanese loss at Saipan
June 18, 1944
REMAINS OF JAPANESE INDUSTRY
All that remained of a Japanese sugar refinery demolished by bombs and naval gunfire during the battle for this island in the Marianas group. On Sunday, June 18, the Japanese fleet came out in a move to halt our conquest of this stepping stone to the Philippines and when the smoke had cleared 353 enemy planes were downed against twenty-one for U.S.
The battle of the Eastern Philippines
June 19, 1944
JAPANESE CARRIER IN FLAMES
Mantled in smoke, a Japanese aircraft carrier of the Shokaku class wallows in distress after a strike by Navy planes during the battle of the Eastern Philippines on June 20. For nearly a year the Japanese fleet had stayed in cautious retirement but our advance into the Marianas was a grave development to Tokio, so on Sunday, June 18, the enemy fleet came out. Staying hundreds of miles out of range, it sent a swarm of planes to attack the U.S. task force and the largest aerial battle seen in the Pacific until that date took place. Three hundred and fifty-three enemy planes were shot down, compared to twenty-one American ships. Never before had the Japanese suffered such heavy air losses in a single engagement. Having lost so many planes, the enemy force fled toward the Philippines. Planes from American carriers gave chase and spotted the Japanese warships. Unfortunately our flyers were not able to attack until just before dark, so a prolonged engagement was impossible. However, they sank a Japanese carrier, left a second one burning, sank three tankers and possibly a destroyer. In all fourteen enemy ships either were sunk or damaged. In addition an American submarine probably sank one of Japan's largest and newest aircraft carriers. In the picture, above, swinging in tight circles, desperately attempting to ward off the attacks of carrier-based planes, a Japanese cruiser turns counter-clockwise.
Running around in circles
June 19, 1944
A battleship of the Kongo class, center, labors through the water after being damaged. The sea battle of the Eastern Philippines was subordinate in importance only to Coral Sea and Midway, both of which it resembled in the respect that the surface vessels were never within firing range and carrier-borne aircraft provided the offensive.
Fighters attack the flying bomb
June, 1944
TACKLING A NEW WEAPON
Fighter pilots and ground crews worked day and night combating the pilotless weapons. These pictures tell the story of a Tempest Squadron, which, equipped with Britain's latest wonder fighter, claimed a notable proportion of the enemy's secret weapon. The first picture, filmed automatically by a camera synchronised with the aircraft's guns, was taken by a fighter pilot as he went to the attack. A rear view of the robot, with flames bursting from its propulsive mechanism, is clearly given. In the picture below, is shown the remains of the fuselage of one of the robot bombs in a field in Southern England.
The Chinese are pushed back
June 20, 1944
SPIES AND PRISONERS
In the picture at top, a Chinese soldier untrusses a suspected Japanese spy at a Division headquarters, while below, Japanese soldiers are being led down to the Salween to be taken to headquarters for questioning. The Japanese threw 50,000 men into this offensive and succeeded in taking Changsha, an important city on the railroad from Peiping through Hankow to Canton.
The Americans close in on Cherbourg
June 20, 1944
HARD FIGHTING FOR A VALUABLE PORT
The decisive break-through that turned the tide of battle in the Cherbourg Area came on the 20th, when the 9th division smashed across the base of the peninsula, trapping the Germans at the Cherbourg end. Each foot of ground had to be fought for, the German resistance was fanatical. Here, charges blast a Nazi pillbox as American soldiers take cover.
Work of the robot planes
June 21, 1944
INNOCENT VICTIMS
Residents of this South of England home search the first floor of their ruined home for any personal belongings still salvageable following the destruction of the building in a Nazi robot plane raid in that area. American and British flyers shot down large numbers of the flying jet-propelled torpedoes, despite the greater speed of the robots.
The Vice-President arrives in China
June 21, 1944
MISSION TO CHINA
Vice-President Henry A. Wallace flew to Asia by way of Alaska during the last week of May, as an ambassador of good will and as a fact finder for the President. The vice-president took along some hybrid corn seed that he had developed and some agricultural motion pictures. Best of all, he carried the prestige of his office, which made his visit an event of importance in Chinese eyes and a boost to their morale. In the picture above he is shown with Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and Madame Chiang just before an official banquet in his honor at Chungking, while at the right, he enjoys America's traditional favorite, pie and coffee, at the Red Cross Club in Chungking with Brigadier General Benjamin Ferris and a Red Cross worker.
Berlin gets its heaviest going-over
June 21, 1944
THE ALLIES RETAIN CONTROL OF THE AIR
With the invasion going well, British and American heavy bombers were able to resume the strategic bombing of Germany on a vast scale, and on the first day of summer, 2,000 American planes gave Berlin its heaviest daylight battering. In the picture above, Flying Fortresses head for the German capital. Below, shows how greater Berlin looked to the U.S. sky armada.
As the Canadians fought for Caen
June 22, 1944
THE OLD AND THE NEW IN NORMANDY
Canadians move forward in a solid convoy (top) passing wrecked German equipment on the side of the road, during the stubborn fight for Caen. Below, Germans retreated so fast in some sectors of Normandy that they left loaded guns, like this "Bazooka" behind. The weapons were captured by the Canadians during their brilliant campaign.
The Red army strikes from the east
June 23, 1944
RUSSIANS ON THE MOVE
On Friday, June 23, Moscow announced a new offensive in the center of the long Russo-German battlefront. The blow fell in the Vitebsk region along the most direct route from Moscow to Berlin, 750 miles away from the advancing Soviet troops. The Allied pincers were tightening on Germany. These pictures show Russian troops in the Vitebsk sector.
Out of the deep to storm a continent
June, 1944
IT'S THEIR TURN NOW
American reinforcements, eager for their shot at the retreating Nazis in Normandy, pile from a Coast Guard landing barge into the surf on the French coast. Hardened for battle, they are on their way to reinforce and replace the fighting units that secured the Norman Beach-head and at the moment were engaged in the great battle to liberate Cherbourg.
First aid for the wounded
June 23, 1944
A CASUALTY IN A NORMAN TOWN
In Trevieres, France, United States Army and Navy medical corps men combine to give an injured American soldier the necessary treatment as he fell from a sniper's bullet during the fight to liberate this town. Fast work by the "medics" and the prompt use of blood plasma, not only saved the lives of many soldiers, but also returned them to the front lines.
First Americans enter Cherbourg
June 25, 1944
"LAFAYETTE, WE ARE HERE"
Soldiers of the U.S. Army move into Cherbourg to wipe out pockets of Nazi resistance after tremendous land and naval barrages had "softened up" the enemy defenses of this strategic Channel port, the principle objective in the first phase of the fighting on the soil of France.
The generals want to die in bed
June 26, 1944
SURRENDER AT CHERBOURG
Lieutenant General von Schlieben, right, emerges from his hideout to surrender to the Americans, and below, with Admiral Walter Hennecke, left, discusses the terms of surrender with the shirt-sleeved Major General J. Lawton Collins, right. The somewhat haggard von Schlieben was willing enough to hoist the white flag himself, but he flatly refused to surrender the garrison. When he was asked how he could justify leaving his men to die uselessly after he had saved his own skin, he shrugged his shoulders and explained that it had been his experience in Russia that small groups of die-hards could achieve major delays. Leaving the small fry to die gloriously for Hitler in order to repair the mistakes of the higher command became something of a specialty in German tactics.
The people of Cherbourg greet their liberators
June 27, 1944
THE YANKS ENTER THE CITY
In the first picture, American soldiers of the 9th Division and French patriots ride a German tank through the streets of the great pre-war port after its liberation. Below, American troops, in battle formation, pass through ruins of the Norman city on the lookout for snipers who delayed their entry into the heart of the city for several hours. Cherbourg was ringed with curling gray and black smoke as the troops entered and French civilians who had survived the shelling of the city came out of their shelters and somehow found flowers to throw at the Americans. Many of them had faces blackened by soot from the fires which raged in the city.
Cherbourg falls to the Americans
June 27, 1944
SCENES INSIDE THE SHELL-TORN CITY
Citizens of the French port, returning to Allied controlled Cherbourg, gaze at one of the soldiers of Hitler's once-proud "Wehrmacht", now lying dead in a street of the city. Below, German prisoners, their hands held high above their heads, follow the lead of their commanders and surrender to the American forces.
Cherbourg returns to the French
June 27, 1944
THE FLAGS FLY OVER CITY HALL AGAIN
United States forces formally occupied Cherbourg on Tuesday, June 27, and forthwith presented it to the French people as the first large city to be returned to them. In the Place Napoleon, on the steps of the Hotel de Ville (shown above), just six hours after the last German had been driven out, Major General Collins gave the city a Tricolor made from red, white and blue parachutes, in which the vanguard of the invasion attacked from the skies on June 6. In return he received French thanks for the liberation of the great Normandy port, which was the first deep water port taken by the Allies in France.
A German hide-out in Cherbourg
June 27, 1944
NAZIS IN CATACOMBS
This picture shows the opening to hideouts used by the Germans before the fall of the city and from which points they put up their greatest opposition. Cut into the cliffs, these hideouts were equipped with great stores of rations. In one of the catacombs the Americans found enough food to feed a battalion for months. There was even bottled water for use in a siege.
After the Allies entered Cherbourg
June 28, 1944
LEFT BEHIND BY THE NAZIS
German soldiers, top, most of whom were abandoned by their officers during the siege of Cherbourg, are marched through the streets of the city after its liberation by the American forces. Below, rows of torpedoes line the walls of this underground fortress in Cherbourg. Evidently intended for use against attack from the sea, the "supermen" had no opportunity to launch them.
Robot lair on the Normandy coast
June 28, 1944
LAUNCHING SITE AND DAMAGE
Believed to be a launching site for Hitler's pilotless planes, this strange arrangement was discovered by American troops that captured Cherbourg. The second picture was made shooting into the same direction from which the flying bomb came and demolished these homes. The burst was 400 feet from where this picture was made. Most of the robot planes passed over this particular unnamed section of southern England.
The Nazis wreck a valuable harbor
June 29, 1944
BLOCKING A SPACIOUS PORT
This ship was scuttled by the Germans to block the entrance to the harbor of Cherbourg, one of the moves by which the foe wrecked the harbor facilities. The Nazis realized that, with Cherbourg under control of the Allies, a steady stream of supplies could flow smoothly from England. The Nazis left it in such a damaged condition that it was to be of little use for many months.
Time out on a Normandy beachhead
June, 1944
REST PERIOD BEFORE ACTION
These American Negro troops (first picture), who helped to keep supplies funneling through the beachhead to American and British forces forging into the interior of France, stop for a few moments of rest and lunch on the invasion beach. Second, a large group of American assault troops, having gained the comparative safety offered by the chalk cliff at their backs, take a "breather" before moving onto the continent. Medical corps men who landed with the group are treating them for minor injuries before they start their advance to the interior.
Gateway to China
June 19, 1944
CROSSING A CHINESE RIVER
The American invasion of Saipan Island, which precipitated the battle of the Eastern Philippines, was a step on the sea road to China. General Stilwell's troops were blasting a land road through Burma; the hope was that the two forces could some day meet. In this picture Chinese and American troops cross an improvised bridge of lashed empty gasoline cans.
Peace comes to a French town
June, 1944
THE YANKS IN CARENTAN
Units of the American Army which took Carentan, in the Normandy beachhead sector, line up in the town square for the presentation of awards to the regimental commanders who led the successful attack against the Nazi-held town, which fell earlier in the month after a fierce battle. In the picture below, pockmarked as if spattered by bombs, this field in Trevieres actually contains abandoned American foxholes or slit trenches. Note how deeply each trench is dug to afford its occupant sufficient protection.
Sidelights in the battle of France
June, 1944
RATION CARDS AND THE DAY'S NEWS
In the second picture are a group of ration cards which had been in use in the occupied territory since early in 1941 and covered nearly all of the necessities of life. In the first picture, French refugees read the daily newspaper printed by the British for the people of Normandy. This newspaper, "La Boix des Allies" was distributed by Amplifier Units. The work of this group was to gather the news from the radio, edit it for the printer and distribute the sheets to the towns and villages. The papers were distributed from a loudspeaker van from which the news was broadcast before the sheets were distributed to the French citizens.
The Admiral looks over the beach
June 28, 1944
INSPECTION OF A NAZI REDOUBT
Accompanied by other high ranking officers of the United States and British navies, Admiral Harold R. Stark. U.S.N., commander of U.S. naval forces in European waters, leaves a formidable Nazi gun emplacement which was knocked out by allied forces during the opening stages of the battle for the beachhead. Made of concrete, fortified with steel, the giant pillbox was so placed as to command a vital sector of the Normandy beach.
Mail from home reaches Cherbourg
June 30, 1944
SORTING THE MAIL
These members of a mobile A.P.O. sort the mail for their units under a camouflage net in front of a mobile post office in France, one that was converted to its present use from a captured German military vehicle. A sergeant and two of his assistants are hard at work, while one of the detail "takes it easy" as he catches up on the news from his home.
Civilian casualties of the war in France
June, 1944
THE INNOCENT SUFFER
In the first picture, a young boy, wounded in both legs and his right arm, bears up bravely while an American medical corpsman treats his injuries. The boy was wounded by a German grenade during fighting for the town of St. Sauveur. At his right is a wounded American soldier. Second, a French woman with both legs blown off by a German antipersonnel mine is taken to an American clearing station in France. Civilian casualties were very heavy as the Germans retreated from towns along the Normandy peninsula.
German nurses return to their homeland
July 1, 1944
THE AMERICAN WAY
A group of German nurses have "chow" with a group of American nurses, behind the American lines after their capture in the American advance near Cherbourg. Below, an ambulance is made ready to transport the captured nurses back to their lines. When they expressed a desire to return to their own forces, rather than be interned, a temporary truce was declared and their wish was granted. Some of these nurses had been on active service since 1939 and had served on every front where the Germans had been involved.
Bitter fighting for Caen
July 1, 1944
AN ANCIENT TOWN HOLDS OUT
Despite the heavy attacks by British troops, the historic city of Caen had not fallen as July opened and the German high command threw every bit of available armor into the battle for William the Conqueror's "stepping-off" place. Slowed by German counter-attacks, the British, who had been holding the Germans around Caen while the Americans took the Cherbourg peninsula, continued to advance. This R.A.F. reconnaissance picture, taken while the fighting was at its height, shows fires burning in the town from the accurate artillery fire of the British.
As the Reds returned to Minsk
July 3, 1944
GERMANS DEMOLISH AS THEY RETREAT
In the picture at top, People of Minsk, with their possessions in the street, watch their homes burning from fires set by the Germans before their retreat, and, below, Minsk citizens cheer Soviet troops as they enter the city, a major objective on the path to East Prussia.
Germans lose their last big Russian city
July 3, 1944
MINSK FALLS
The great Russian "counter-blitz" swept westward to Germany as the month of July opened, highlighted by the capture of Minsk, last large Russian city in Nazi hands. Here the Germans suffered a major debacle, their troops were killed or captured by thousands. In these pictures, top, the Soviet flag goes up over the city and, below, Soviet tanks drive past the government buildings.
Pushing the Germans out of the Baltic States
July 4, 1944
SURGING AGAINST THE EASTERN FRONTIER
One of the main objectives of the great Soviet drive was to push down the Dvina River and cut off the Nazi troops which had been holding the upper Baltic States. The capture of Polotsk, on July 4, was a great step in that direction. Here, infantry-laden Soviet tanks roll through the city past the body of one of the invaders. This territory had been under German control since their victorious drive in 1941.
A pillbox becomes a "pillbox"
July 4, 1944
THE RED CROSS OVER FRANCE
In the first picture American soldiers raise a flag over a German pillbox in Normandy following its capture by Allied forces who converted it into a dispensary. The flag was one of the first to reach France. In the second picture, Canadian artillerymen blaze away at enemy positions in the Caen area as their way of celebrating American Independence Day. The fighting for Caen was still continuing on a large scale as the Germans had concentrated their defenses in this area.
Portable ports in Normandy
July, 1944
A REAL SECRET WEAPON
By July the Allies had in operation one of the most remarkable engineering feats of all time. On the invasion coast were installed two prefabricated harbors without which the liberation of France that followed would not have been possible. To provide the invasion forces with the necessary stream of supplies and reinforcements, two synthetic harbors, each the size of Dover, were prefabricated in Britain, towed piecemeal across the Channel and set down on the coast of Normandy. The pictures on these pages show the British harbor in operation; the American installation was destroyed by heavy storms which occurred while it was being assembled. Above is an air view of the complete British harbor. In the foreground are the sunken concrete caissons which provided the breakwater. Near the shore is the wharf and the long piers over which materials were transported ashore. At right is the wharf unit consisting of seven specially designed "spud pierheads," steel pontoons with a displacement of approximately 1,000 tons. Each pierhead is a "ship," complete with crews' quarters, generating sets and storage accommodations. At far right is one of the floating pier roadways running from the wharf to the shore. In this instance it is being traversed by ambulances bringing the wounded from shore to ship.
The queen visits one of her subjects
July, 1944
PROUD MOMENT FOR THIS CANADIAN
Wounded in the invasion of France, this Canadian soldier received the thrill of a lifetime when Queen Elizabeth stopped at his bedside in a Canadian hospital in England. Behind the queen is the officer commanding the hospital and a wounded "up-patient" stands at attention alongside his bed. Queen Elizabeth's visits to the sick and wounded were of as great a value in building morale as the King's trips to the front.
Some Frenchwomen lose their crowning glory
July, 1944
PUNISHMENT TO FIT THE CRIME
Now that the Allied forces have come and freed sections of enslaved France, French patriots weed out the Quislings in their midst. Meting out punishment to fit the crime, they set a particularly appropriate price for women collaborationists to pay. Going from house to house, the patriots seized female traitors, dragged them into the streets and put the scissors to their hair, as shown in this series of pictures. Upper left, this 23-year old girl is seized by the patriots. Upper right, she wails and protests in vain as the "barber" goes to work on her locks and, last, she tearfully pats the rough ends of her shorn locks. The same operation was performed on every other female collaborationist in the area, rendering them unattractive to men—Nazi or otherwise—for a while to come.
General De Gaulle visits America
July 6, 1944
GUEST OF THE GOVERNMENT
General Charles de Gaulle came to the United States as a guest of the government and was welcomed with all the ceremony customarily accorded to the head of a foreign nation. He was flown from Algiers in an upholstered Army plane, was greeted in Washington with a seventeen-gun salute and was whisked to the White House where he met the President and his cabinet (top) where he is shown being greeted by Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, while Secretary of State Cordell Hull, President Roosevelt and Mrs. John Boettiger, the President's daughter, look on. Afterwards he visited General John J. Pershing in the General's suite at Walter Reed Hospital (bottom).
Welcomed to New York
July 10, 1944
On July 10 General Charles de Gaulle visited New York, where he is shown (above) speaking on the steps of City Hall alongside of Mayor F. H. LaGuardia at the official reception. De Gaulle's visit did much to clear an unpleasant atmosphere which had hovered over American-French relations.
The Nazis check on Allied shipping
July, 1944
ENEMY CONCEPTION OF ALLIED VESSELS
Found on the wall in the quarters of a Nazi observation post in the Cherbourg area, this chart depicts enemy conceptions of the silhouettes of the small type English warships. All this information, while perhaps of value in covering a "bad spot" on a wall, did not stop the Allies from coming and going across the Channel as they pleased.
Caen falls to the British
July 9, 1944
A LONG BATTLE ENDS
The Norman town of Caen, which fell to the British and Canadian troops on July 9, had been heavily mined by the Germans and parts of it were badly damaged in the battle which led to its capture. Enemy snipers caused numerous casualties before they were ejected, and here, a British mortar platoon is shown in action against a nest of snipers.
After the British entered Caen
July 9, 1944
DEVASTATION IN A NORMAN TOWN
The British and Canadians fought their way into the inland port of Caen on Sunday, July 9, to find the city a mass of rubble and bomb craters; bulldozers had to clear paths through the streets so tanks and jeeps could get through. The French prefect estimated that between 4,000 and 5,000 civilians had been killed by the shelling and bombing. Some 500 of the residents emerged from a deep grotto, an abandoned quarry, where they had taken refuge for three agonizing weeks. Here they are seen telling their problems to Lieutenant General J. T. Crocker, commander of the British 1st Corps, on his tour of inspection after the British entered the city. In the second picture, a British canteen opens under the name of "The Pop Inn."
A stop on the road to Riga
July 10, 1944
THE GERMANS ARE PUSHED BACK
Prongs of the Russian Army were pushing swiftly westward to cut off the Nazis along the entire front. One drive was into Latvia with Riga as the probable objective. In these pictures, top, Soviet tommy-gunners are shown in pursuit of Nazi forces during the fighting for Pskov, and below, a Soviet infantry unit is passing through the streets of the same city which had been laid waste by the Nazis in their attempt to escape the fury of the Red Army. Pskov's location on the Estonian border made possession of it important in relation to future operations in the Baltic states.
The freight cars come ashore
July, 1944
MAKING USE OF CHERBOURG HARBOR
In the first such attempt made by the transportation corps, freight cars are brought ashore at Cherbourg Harbor from an LST (landing ship, tanks) using a specially constructed ramp in a portion of the wrecked port which had been made usable by the corps of engineers in the first few days of the Allied occupation of the devastated city. It was weeks before the installations at Cherbourg permitted the unloading of the big vessels.
Robots get a London landmark
July 10, 1944
MILITARY HOUSE OF WORSHIP DESTROYED
Damaged, possibly beyond repair, the famous Guards' Chapel in London was a victim of the indiscriminate shelling of the British capital by the German's robot bombs. Casualties were very heavy in the raid which ruined the 106-year-old edifice, situated in Birdcage Walk, a stone's throw from Buckingham Palace, during Sunday morning services. Guards' Chapel was thus added to the long list of badly damaged historic buildings, started in the "blitz" of 1941.
Mountbatten inspects American flat-top
July 11, 1944
A VISIT FROM KING GEORGE'S COUSIN
Hands on hips, Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, supreme commander, Allied Eastern forces, chats with U.S. Navy officers during an inspection of an American aircraft carrier in Indian waters. The carrier took part in actions by combined Allied forces, under the command of Lord Louis, in the drive to oust the Japanese from this Pacific theatre. At this time Mountbatten was also concerned with land operations, although the greater part of his career had been spent at sea.
America loses a Roosevelt
July 13, 1944
A SON OF "TEDDY" DIES IN FRANCE
Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt, acting assistant division commander of the 4th division, and son of the late President Theodore Roosevelt, died on the night of July 13, 1944, at the front in Normandy, of exhaustion induced by overwork. A man who won his spurs in several fields, General Roosevelt is shown, below, standing before his command post on the day of his death, and above, at his desk. General Roosevelt was the third of the four sons of the late president to die serving his country.
Moscow's big parade
July 18, 1944
BAGGED BY THE RUSSIANS
Through the streets of Moscow, past thousands of spectators, more than 57,000 captured Germans marched on this July day in 1944. They were marching as prisoners taken by the Red Army on the White Russian front, and, not as conquering heroes. Diplomats from many countries were among the crowds which silently followed the line of march from the railroad station to view the weary, unkempt figures who had entered Russia so confident of success only a few short months ago, only to be repulsed as the Russian armies really started to roll.
St. Lo falls after a hard battle
July 18, 1944
A NAZI BASTION IS STORMED
For more than a week the town of St. Lo blocked the advance of American troops at the western end of the Normandy battle front. The battle for this town, which had a prewar population of 12,000 was harder than that for Cherbourg itself. On the 15th, a battalion commanded by Major Sidney V. Bingham jr., penetrated to the outskirts of the town, only to find itself cut off by Germans to the rear. The isolated men were hungry, having only a chocolate bar apiece. The wounded lay there in agony and some died for lack of medical care. The battalion ran low on ammunition and used mortar shells and grenades captured from the Nazis. On Monday a second battalion fought its way up to join Major Bingham's unit. On Tuesday, the 18th, the skies were clear and, planes helped blast a path through the German defenders. Other units moved ahead in force and late in the afternoon they and the two "lost" battalions stormed into the town. In this picture, American infantrymen "hit the dirt" to avoid small arms fire from snipers and an artillery barrage. The rescuing battalion was commanded by Major Thomas D. Howie. Howie was killed on June 17, the day before St. Lo fell. After the victory his body was carried through the streets of the town in state and placed on a pile of rubble beside the shell-wrecked church of Ste. Croix. He became known as the "Major of St. Lo".
Action in a Leghorn street
July 19, 1944
BATTLING FOR A PORT IN ITALY
A soldier attached to the 5th Army is on the alert for enemy snipers while his colleagues set off mines sowed heavily in one of the main streets leading to Leghorn Harbor on the day that the Americans took control of this Italian port. The fight was a bitter one in which the Germans had done all they could to wreck the post facilities which were calculated to prove of great value to the Allies, once in their possession. The bottom picture on page 1388 gives some idea of the destruction.
Leghorn falls to the 5th Army
July 19, 1944
A GREAT PORT IS CAPTURED
Lieutenant General Mark W. Clark gives a mass interview to war correspondents in the streets of Livorno (more familiar under its Anglicized name, Leghorn) as the port fell to the 5th Army. In the bottom photograph, the damage done to the ground, harbor and port installations, by the retreating Nazis, is vividly revealed. In the weeks that followed the harbor was cleared and the port became useful for not only the Italian campaign but the operations in southern France.
The Allies find devastation in Leghorn
July 19, 1944
THE TOLL OF BATTLE
In the picture at top, an Hawaiian-American soldier of Japanese ancestry patrols a debris-strewn street of the Italian port, and below, other Hawaiian-Americans ride jeep patrol through the streets. The campaign in Italy, which included troops from half a dozen nations, became more international in scope when an expeditionary force from Brazil joined the fighting on the 15th. Brazil was the first of our Latin-American Allies to send troops to the European war theatre. She sent one division or approximately 10,000 men.
Americans hit the beach at Guam
July 20, 1944
LANDINGS CLIMAX TERRIFIC BOMBARDMENT
Smoke from flames begun by shells and bombs hangs like a pall over Guam as fresh explosions thunder on the shores of the Japanese stronghold in the shattering prelude to Marine and Army landings, shown above. Below, U.S. Marines are shown moving in on Agat Beach past an upside-down Japanese dive bomber destroyed by Navy planes. Climaxing seventeen days of unparalleled aerial and surface bombardment, the invasion got under way on July 20, but the reconquest was not completed until August 9, 1944. The taking of Guam proved to be a major engagement, although it was not attended by as large a casualty list as at Saipan.
The Americans return to Guam
July 20, 1944
THE ASSAULT IN FULL SWING
This aerial oblique gives an over-all view of one of the sectors hit by marines in Navy-manned landing craft during the initial landings on this Pacific outpost. Smoke inland denotes targets smashed by aerial and surface bombardment of this island which had been held by the United States for forty years before December 10, 1941, when it was conquered by the Japanese. At that time it was defended by a handful of American Marines and a few construction workers.
The dead and wounded in Guam fighting
July 20, 1944
HEAVY FIGHTING FOR A PACIFIC STRONGHOLD
In the picture at top, a Navy medical corpsman lifts the head of a Marine, wounded in the landings, to give him a sip of cool water. Below, some of the Japanese warriors killed by U.S. forces during early stages of the invasion are shown. The Marine photographer who made this picture killed four of the foe between his photographic duties.
The old and the new in Japanese premiers
July 20, 1944
CABINET SHAKEN-UP
General Hideki Tojo, (left) premier of Japan since a few weeks before Pearl Harbor, was dropped as Premier on July 20 and General Kuniaki Koiso (top right), and Admiral Mitsumasi Yonai (bottom), were called by the Emperor to form a new cabinet. The removal of Tojo did not mean any change in Japan's fundamental policy. Koiso was named premier and Yonai his deputy. The changes were made following American victories on Saipan and in the East Philippine Sea.
Attempt on life of Hitler
July 21, 1944
Hitler and his gang
July 21, 1944
TURMOIL IN THE REICH
Adolf Hitler went on the radio Friday morning July 21, and announced that he had been conferring with his advisers when a bomb exploded six feet away, inflicting upon him "negligible grazes, bruises or burns." The bomb had been placed by Colonel Count von Stauffenberg in a plot hatched by a clique of officers who wanted to kill Hitler, seize power and make peace. Two generals were supposed to have led the revolt, only one of whom was named: Colonel General Ludwig Beck. He was listed as "no longer among living persons." To restore order Hitler said that he had appointed Heinrich Himmler, Gestapo Chief, to be commander of the Army within Germany. Reich Marshal Hermann Goering amplified Hitler's remarks by announcing that the plot had been hatched by generals who had been dismissed. One of them, General Walther von Brauchitsch, is shown in picture at left with Hitler in happier days. In the second picture, Hitler is shown as he met with his war chiefs a few days before the plot. Left to right, they are Field Marshal Keitel, Admiral Doenitz, Himmler and Field Marshal Milch. General Beck is in picture at lower left and, lower right, a close-up of the feared Himmler. The one point which Berlin kept emphasizing was that the plot had been completely suppressed and that all the conspirators had been killed or had committed suicide. For the next week rumors continued to seep out of Germany telling of a wholesale purge being conducted by the Elite Guard involving many arrests and executions of men in high places.
Black week for the Nazis in Russia
July 22-29, 1944
TEN CITIES FALL TO THE RUSSIANS
The last week in July was one of the most disastrous seven days which the Nazis had known since 1939. On the Russian front the whole German line from the Baltic to the Carpathians was being pushed back pell-mell. In seven days the Red Army had captured no less than ten cities which the Germans had turned into fortresses guarding the Nazi heartland. In these pictures, top, residents of Lwow raise a sign in celebration of their restoration to the Soviet, and below, Russian infantrymen are shown in action on the approaches to East Prussia. While the Nazis were retreating at an unprecedented speed, there were indications that they were counting on making a more determined stand on their own border which offered the support of permanent fortifications.
Coming ashore at Tinian
July 23, 1944
ANOTHER LANDING IS A SUCCESS
Between Guam and conquered Saipan to the north lies the smaller island of Tinian, where the Japanese had been raising sugar cane. U.S. Marines descended upon the island on Sunday, July 23, after plane and warship bombardments had softened up its defenders. On the first night of the invasion the Japanese rushed forward screaming and waving Samura swords to push the Marines off the beach. They refused to be pushed and cut down the Japanese by the hundred. By the 25th they had seized the airport on the northern tip and were pushing the foe to the sea. In this picture, top, a long line of Marine and Army amphibious tractors coming into the beach at Tinian looks like a holiday excursion train. The island fell after nine days of fighting. In the bottom picture, holding a tiny Japanese baby, this husky Marine sergeant poses for the camera with a grin. The baby was born after the U.S. landing was made.
"Monty" and "Ike" on the battlefield
July, 1944
TOUGH NUTS FOR THE GERMANS TO CRACK
General (now Field Marshal) Sir Bernard L. Montgomery, commander of the Allied ground forces in the battle of Normandy, strides with General Dwight D. Eisenhower, outside of Montgomery's headquarters in the British sector during General Eisenhower's inspection tour of the entire Allied front line positions. This was one of the many conferences between these two top men of the Allied command as the battle for France raged.
Three-generals and the secretary
July, 1944
FIRST HAND INFORMATION
Lieutenant General Omar N. Bradley, commander of the First Army, left, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson and Lieutenant General George S. Patton, commander of the Third Army, discussing progress of the French campaign, and below, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied commander, pauses to talk to some enlisted men during his tour of an advanced sector in France.
After the smoke of battle cleared
July 26, 1944
DEVASTATION IN FRANCE
A view of the much-bombed town of St. Lo, showing the gutted buildings. Although occupied by American forces, the town was still under incessant shelling from Nazi batteries south of the town.
Britain's defense against the flying bomb
July, 1944
SLOWING UP A NAZI TERROR
During the robot attacks on England, the R.A.F. sent up 2,000 barrage balloons to protect London and the South of England. These balloons accounted for more than 200 of the bombs launched by the Nazis. These pictures show airmen of an R. A. F. defense crew inspecting and assembling the flying bombs which were brought down at their station.
Negro troops do their bit in France
July, 1944
FIXING UP A LITTLE TROUBLE FOR THE NAZIS
Members of a field artillery battery emplace a 155mm. howitzer under its camouflaged canopy "somewhere on the Normandy Peninsula." In the picture below, a troop train is being unloaded in Cherbourg, bringing the first Negro troops to their assigned post of duty at that port which had been captured during the previous month.
Prisoners and a hide-out in France
July 30, 1944
THEY FOUGHT FOR GERMANY
An armed French civilian, left, and a gendarme, right, bring in German prisoners, Mongolian type, from Turkestan. These men were taken prisoners near Avranches, during the American advance. Below, is a picture of a block house in St. Lo, France. Of concrete construction, with huge steel doors, it had living quarters complete with power-plant.
A victory in North Burma
July 30, 1944
NORTHERN BURMA TOWN CAPTURED
The land campaign in Asia made progress when Chinese, American and British forces finally overwhelmed Myitkyina, largest town in Northern Burma. The Japanese had defended it against siege since May 17 for they needed this town at the end of the Rangoon railway as a base of operations. Here two G.I.'s share a pillbox which had been occupied by the foe only a few hours previously.
The Allies dominate New Guinea
July 30, 1944
SANSAPOR FALLS TO THE MEN OF MACARTHUR
Since April Allied troops had moved more than 600 miles along the New Guinea coast in a series of amphibious leaps. The latest one took them to Sansapor, 675 miles from Davao in the Philippines. The landing on this island is shown above, where the Navy LST's have moved into the beachhead to discharge their troops and equipment. Below, a "baby" carrier arrives at Guadalcanal with a load of P-38's for replacement purposes. Even though the battle area had moved north, Guadalcanal was still being equipped with the best.
A lull in the fighting in France
July, 1944
WARM WELCOME FOR THE LIBERATORS
The people of France, for the most part, wildly acclaimed the American troops. Here, in the picture at top, an American officer enjoys a freshly made omelet presented to him by grateful civilians who had just been liberated from German hands. Below, an old couple is given a jeep ride from an enemy-shelled town to a rest area back of the front lines.
Time out to make things ship-shape
July, 1944
RESTING FROM THE BATTLES
Her bristling guns silent while she rides at anchor in a friendly port, this battleship takes time out between operations in the Pacific. Her crew is busy with the housekeeping chores of life on a capital ship, working on the guns, and getting their ship ready for the next foray.
The champion entertains the troops
July, 1944
CHAMPIONS ALL
Brigadier General Benjamin O. Davis, highest ranking Negro officer, chats with Staff Sergeant Joe Louis, World's heavyweight champion, somewhere in Europe, where Louis staged boxing exhibitions for the troops. Below, Queen Elizabeth gives comfort to a young American lieutenant, who was wounded during the early stages of the invasion of France.
Reunion in Pearl Harbor
July, 1944
A VISIT FROM THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF
General Douglas MacArthur, left, President Roosevelt and Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, aboard a cruiser of the U.S. Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor. The president passed three days at this outpost, having traveled there from San Diego after delivering his 4th term acceptance speech to the Democratic convention. The President's trip served to emphasize that this phase of the war was by no means forgotten in the great drive in Europe. Liberation of the Philippines was on the program, the President said, and General MacArthur was assured that he would have a leading part in that offensive. Thus Mr. Roosevelt made it clear that General MacArthur would not be left in a relatively inactive role now that the campaign in New Guinea was drawing to a close. In Hawaii the President talked not only with generals and admirals, but also with flyers who had been fighting the Japanese in the skies over the Pacific and with marines and infantrymen who had been wounded in the Marianas. A few days after the President left Honolulu his remarks about the Philippines were translated into action as American planes began their aerial campaign against the islands and their Japanese conquerors. The United States was committed to a reconquest of the Philippines from not only a moral but practical military standpoint.
President in the Pacific
July, 1944
CONFERENCE AT PEARL HARBOR
Early in August it was announced that President Roosevelt had inspected the American bases at Pearl Harbor during the last few days of July. There he discussed Pacific strategy with General Douglas MacArthur, and Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, who is shown, above, going over a map of the Pacific as General MacArthur, the President and Admiral William D. Leahy, the President's chief of staff, listen to the lecture. In the picture below, the President is shown with MacArthur and Nimitz as the commander-in-chief inspected troops and the rebuilt and new fortifications at Pearl Harbor. This was the first opportunity the President had of seeing the changes made at the base since the infamous attack of December 7, 1941.
Entertainment for the troops
July, 1944
KEEPING UP THE MORALE
G.I.'s flock around an improvised platform to witness the first camp show in France. Sponsored by the U.S.O., hundreds of top-flight entertainers of the theatre, films and radio, traveled to all theatres of action, bringing the soldiers a touch of home. The stars worked day and night, and underwent the same hardships as the soldiers they entertained. Many gave several shows per day, travelling from camp to camp by air transport.
The Russians reach the Baltic Sea
August 1, 1944
GERMANS TRAPPED
As August opened the Russians closed the trap on the German forces in Estonia and Latvia. This was accomplished on August 1, when a Red Army broke through to the Baltic Sea, below Riga. In these pictures, top, a Red Army guard unit, supported by tanks advances to the attack, and below, Soviet troops are shown marching through the liberated town of Pinsk.
Progress in France
August, 1944
ALLIES BREAK OUT OF THE BRIDGEHEAD
On July 2, the greater part of the Cherbourg Peninsula being in Allied hands, repair work in the city was going on rapidly. Four forts in the dock area were the last to surrender, but these were effectively bombed by "Marauders" from 6,000 feet and pounded to surrender. So accurate was the bombing that although the forts were severely damaged, the whole length of the breakwater on which they were situated was only superficially blasted. What damage there was, was largely the result of German demolitions. By July 5, steady progress was being made across the base of the Cherbourg Peninsula on a thirteen-and-a-half-mile sector which took the Allies to the top of the 400-ft. hills about three miles north of the road junction of La Haye de Puits, a remarkable advance in view of the wooded and marshy country which particularly favored the defensive tactics of the enemy. On July 6, very great advances were made. The right wing thrust further down to the west coast and another column struck down the Carentan-Periers road. By July 7, the road was successfully cut a mile south of La Haye, and the village of Blemont was captured. The map illustrates the campaign in the Cherbourg Peninsula and shows the break-through into Brittany on August 4.
Flowers and smiles for the liberators
August 3, 1944
A GESTURE OF WELCOME FROM A FRENCH GIRL
A pretty young Mademoiselle presents members of a U.S. Army tank crew with flowers in appreciation of the liberation of the town of Avranches, as American tanks cut loose in a wide end run in the general direction of Paris, capturing German equipment and soldiers and making the Allies masters of the whole area up to the Seine River after the break-out from Cherbourg. The important victory at Avranches opened up Brittany for the Americans.
A French soldier comes home
August 4, 1944
A WELCOME FROM THE ONE WHO COUNTS
A Lieutenant of the 2nd French Armored Division, which was fighting again in the French homeland, and was to play such a great part in the liberation of Paris, greets his wife, whom he left in 1943, when he joined the Free French Forces in North Africa. A wounded soldier smiles his approval at this domestic scene in a liberated village.
Besieged Japanese commit hart-kari
August 6, 1944
STIFF RESISTANCE ON GUAM
As infantrymen move up on a Japanese pillbox on Guam, a United States tank fires point blank at the concrete emplacement and as the attack pressed closer, the foe inside the pillbox could be heard committing suicide with hand grenades. In the picture at right, infantrymen look over the bodies of three Japanese soldiers who killed themselves in the pillbox. The building in which the foe made his stand still smoulders from the terrific tank attack. In this conquest of the southern Marianas, American infantry and Marines were killing seven enemy soldiers for every one they lost. Up to this date about 30,000 Japanese had been killed or captured, compared with 3,529 American dead and 1,550 wounded or missing.
Burning Japanese out of hiding on Guam
August 6, 1944
A FLAME-THROWER IN ACTION
While a marine, left, uses a flame thrower to burn the enemy out of a hidden pillbox on Guam, his buddies wait with guns poised for the Japanese to show themselves. Although surrounded by leathernecks, the Japanese refused to surrender. Some 10,000 enemy troops doggedly defended the northern third of the island and it was no easy task to drive them out.
Inching ahead in the battle for France
August 9, 1944
NOT A JUNGLE IN THE PACIFIC
A battle of the hedgerows takes place near Mortain, France, as American infantrymen rush from their hedgerow to an enemy-held point. The heavy foliage and the shadows make the scene reminiscent of New Guinea, instead of the countryside in Brittany where the Americans were making a concerted drive after breaking out of Normandy.
An embarrassing moment for this Nazi
August 9, 1944
HE LOOKS DISGUSTED WITH THE WAR
Two members of an armored unit bring in their first German prisoner in the battle around Brest, France. The "super-man" does not look so super as he sits at the business end of an American bayonet, while the American columns swept on to lay siege to the important port of Brest, the clearing house for so many thousands of the A.E.F. in 1917-18.
The Navy Secretary inspects his Honor Guard
August 9, 1944
AMERICANS WHO WERE TRIED
AND NOT FOUND WANTING
With the wreckage of Leghorn in the background, Lieutenant General Mark W. Clark, commander of the 5th Army, and Secretary of the Navy James V. Forrestal inspect troops from the 100th infantry battalion, composed of Americans of Japanese descent. The troops were the Secretary's guard of honor during his inspection tour of the front.
A soldier of '17-'18 beckons the Americans on
August, 1944
THE YANKS ARE ROLLING ALONG
In the picture, top, the French soldier in the memorial to the men of the First World War, seems to be beckoning his American allies on in their advance against the Germans, as American tank destroyers roar past his post in a French village. Below, up and over a hedgerow, somewhere on the Brittany front, goes this infantryman for a hand-to-hand struggle with the enemy. In some ways the hedgerows made the battle reminiscent of World War I.
Sightseers and prisoners in the battle for France
August, 1944
TWO CONTRASTING SCENES
G.I.'s in a jeep, going through Mont St. Michel, one of the towns liberated in the American drive through France, stop to look at the famous abbey there. Below, men of the Maquis, the French "Underground", march two captured Germans to a concentration camp near Brest. The work of these French patriots was to prove of considerable help during the Allied advance.
Germans trapped in Estonia
August 3, 1944
THE RED ARMY ROLLS ON AGAINST THE NAZIS
On Thursday, August 3, the Russians closed the trap on the German forces in Estonia and Northern Latvia, where Hitler had left a force to make a hopeless last stand after the fashion of Stalingrad. In these pictures, top, Soviet batteries are seen in action against enemy positions, and below, dislodging Germans from an enemy stronghold.
The Eighth Army enters Florence
August 4, 1944
FALL OF THE HOME OF THE RENAISSANCE IS NEAR
South African troops of the 8th Army entered Italy's most beautiful city on the morning of August 4. They passed the Pitti Palace, which was found unscarred, and reached the left bank of the River Arno to discover that the retreating Germans had blown up five of the six famous bridges within the city. The only one left intact—and it was blocked by the Germans—was the Ponte Vecchio (Old Bridge), originally Roman and rebuilt in 1345. The most celebrated of the bridges in Florence, lined with jewelry shops dating from the fourteenth century and surmounted by a covered passage from the Pitti Palace to the Palazzo degli Uffizi on the right bank, was spared because its roadway is too narrow for vehicles such as the Allied armies in Italy use. With access to the main portion of the city barred temporarily, the South Africans could hear the crackle of small arms fire on the other side of the river. This indicated that Italian partisans were harassing the German rear-guard. The Germans thus dropped all pretense of respecting the status of an open city which they themselves announced several months ago. They destroyed the Ponte Santa Trinita, with its fine Statues of the Seasons, first built in 1252; the Ponte alla Carraia, the Ponte alle Grazie and the Ponte di Ferro, the easternmost bridge at Florence. In this picture Florentines jam the destroyed Ponte alle Grazi to return to their homes in the city after the 8th Army had arrived.
Destruction in Florence
August, 1944
FLORENTINES, RETURNING TO THEIR HOMES
People with bundles of food, after the city had been entered by the Allies, are shown picking their way across the Ponte alle Grazie, which spanned the Arno River until destroyed by the Nazis in their mad retreat. The people were willing to risk a ducking to get back, as shown by these cat-walkers balanced on a rail of the blown-up bridge.
The Pacific situation is well in hand
August, 1944
THE ALLIES ARE SETTING THE RISING SUN
This map shows in great detail the strides made by the United Nations in the Pacific. Guam had been completely recaptured and Americans were consolidating their gains on other islands. A thousand miles to the south of Guam, troops, under General MacArthur, were bringing to a close their campaign in New Guinea, and at the moment were only 600 miles from Davao, their latest amphibious "leap" taking them to Sansapor. Meanwhile the B-29 superfortresses were striking at Japan itself, the foe's oil storage centers in Sumatra and the steel plants on their home islands.
The Reds close in on East Prussia
August 5, 1944
GERMANY, ITSELF, IS THREATENED
On Saturday, August 5, the Russians were about to move onto the "holy soil" of the Fatherland itself. In fact, the Berlin radio reported that the Red Army had already crossed the border. In the picture at top, machine gunners are shown in action on the frontier of East Prussia, and below, other machine gunners of the Soviet, are fording a river.
The French take care of their own
August 9, 1944
HE DISCOVERS THAT HE LIKES THE ALLIES
Cornered by patriots who hunted down the traitors in their midst when the Allies reached the town of Rennes, this collaborator sinks to his knees in partial payment for his sins, as members of the Maquis, the French underground organization, forced him to kneel and shout his praises of the Allies. The Nazi retreat in France was just what the Maquis had been waiting for. Out from the hills and hiding places they came, pouncing upon the luckless garrisons and nipping at the retreating columns of troops, as well as taking care of the people who had aided the Nazis during the occupation. According to some reports Vichy was a city besieged by French patriots: Laval could not get to his country chateau for fear of ambush by the Maquis.
Guam returns to the United States
August 10, 1944
THE CONQUEST IS COMPLETED
A marine howitzer, one of the first to be brought ashore, blasts enemy positions in the battle for Guam, the first American base to be taken by the Japanese and the first to be recovered after a campaign of three weeks in which the Japanese lost thousands of men and much equipment. Meanwhile the neighboring island of Tinian, much smaller than Guam, had been conquered.
Action at the base of the Normandy peninsula
August 10, 1944
A KEY POINT ON THE ROAD TO PARIS FALLS
The mammoth display of pyrotechnics in the picture at top is the real thing. Exploding shells leave trails of smoke and flame when a German ammunition dump just outside of Falaise explodes after a heavy British raid. Below, Canadian sappers search for mines along the grass borders lining the streets, after they had entered the town.
The Americans return to the port of Brest
August 12, 1944
MOST IMPORTANT GOAL IN BRITTANY
As smoke from gunfire fills the air, two allied soldiers move up on the double through a shell-wracked street in Brest during the six weeks that the battle for this important port lasted. In the lower picture a much more tranquil procession moves back the other way as Allied soldiers march their cache of German prisoners to the rear for questioning. German forces in Brest did not completely capitulate until weeks later.
Through the wheat fields of the Ukraine
August, 1944
THE REDS PUSH THE NAZIS BACK
As August opened, the Germans were drawing in and concentrating their forces not only in France, but also in other parts of Europe and had shifted sixteen divisions in an effort to halt the Red tide. In these pictures, top, Red Army men are shown with their semi-automatic tank rifle, and below, tankmen and tommy gunners in action in a Ukrainian wheat field.
And over there lies southern France
August 14, 1944
INVASION ARMADA
Every type of craft imaginable is represented here in the huge fleet of ships assembled at a port in Southern Italy in preparation for the invasion of Southern France. The invasion took place the following day when thousands of Allied troops hit the shores of what had been the playground for the wealthy—The French Riviera.
Awaiting their turn to hit the shores of southern France
August, 1944
"SWEATING IT OUT"
As this picture was taken, a few days before the invasion of Southern France, thousands of troops of the 3rd Division await their turn to board nearby landing craft for the big operation. Other members of the Allied command watch the operations from a high wall overlooking this Italian port. The area chosen for the landings in Southern France was south of the famous pre-war resort area of Nice, Cap d'Antibes and Cannes. At only one point was German resistance so heavy that the landing forces could not be disembarked. Veterans of the Anzio landings, which had also been easy but were followed by fierce German counter-attacks, waited for the Nazis to open up. Instead the advance groups pushed as far as thirty miles inland, striking through the valleys and foothills to the Maritime Alps. Three days later 7,000 German prisoners, including a general and his staff, had been captured, against a total of 300 Allied casualties. The weakness of the German opposition was a surprise to the Allied command, headed by General Sir Henry Maitland Wilson, supreme Allied commander in the Mediterranean. The German high command, at least, must have known something was being planned in Italy. King George VI, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Secretary of the Navy James V. Forrestal and Under Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson had all recently visited Italy and more than 800 ships had been assembled in the area, yet resistance by the foe was negligible.
Preparing to smash into southern France
August 15, 1944
THE ALLIES RULE THE SEA
In the picture at top is a panoramic view of the great armada which landed the soldiers of the Allies in southern France on the morning of August 15. The vessels lie within a harbor half-enclosed by a great semi-circle of land. In the bottom picture, men of the 36th Division prepare to board their landing craft for the invasion of the Riviera.
The Allies smash through southern France
August 16, 1944
TRAFFIC ON THE BEACHHEAD
Hitting the shores which have been known for years as the playground of the "international set", Allied forces are shown as they landed on the Riviera to launch the second great drive on France. Hands aloft, Nazi prisoners are passed to the rear. Below, James V. Forrestal, Secretary of the Navy and Vice Admiral H. K. Hewitt, in rear of jeep, check up on the landings.
"Out of the bright, blue heaven"
August 15, 1944
AIRBORNE INVASION OF SOUTHERN FRANCE
For several weeks prior to D Day, the Allies had followed the same tactics which preceded the Normandy landings. Bombers hit bridges and road junctions surrounding the landing area until it was virtually isolated, duplicating their work elsewhere to avoid giving away the exact spot for the attack. Every railroad bridge across the Rhone below Valence was knocked out. Then, just before the assault, the huge Allied armada moved close to shore points and shelled the most important defense installations. Parachutists and airborne troops were dropped and landed behind beaches to secure important road junctions and bridges. Then the landings began. Prime Minister Winston Churchill watched the operations from the bridge of a British destroyer and shortly the beaches were swarming with men, vehicles and tanks. In this picture, parachutes fill the sky over Southern France after the 12th USAAF troop carrier air division's Douglas C-47's carried men and supplies to dropping zones over the new beachhead in the vicinity of Nice.
The price of invasion
August 15, 1944
CASUALTIES OF THE LANDINGS IN SOUTHERN FRANCE
In the picture at top, bandaged Allied casualties, who fell during the invasion of the French Riviera on the morning of August 15, lie on their stretchers as they await transportation to hospital ships. Below, French soldiers, part of the Allied landing forces, wounded during the operation, await evacuation back to their native land.
—And Florence is out of bounds
August, 1944
TOUGH BREAK FOR THE ALLIES
"Out of Bounds," in Army parlance "keep out." This sign, despite the fact that the signorina is very attractive, means just that, as soldiers were forbidden to enter the main section of the city, except on duty. Snipers were still plentiful, and although civilians roamed the streets at will, it was dangerous for the Allies. The last Nazi was not driven out for two weeks.
The Nazis topped in a battle of words
August 15, 1944
PETAIN COVERED BY THE ALLIES
Topping Marshal Petain's defeatist warning to the people of France not to aid the Allies, is the announcement by General Sir Henry Maitland Wilson, which roughly translated, said, "The armies of the United Nations have landed in the Mediterranean. Long live the soul of France, and all she represents." It was posted in towns near the Allied landings in Southern France and in this particular case directly over a Petain decree.
Street scene on the road to Paris
August 15, 1944
HUNTING GERMAN SNIPERS
Their eyes alert and faces grim, two Canadian soldiers edge along a wall in this village just outside of Falaise, where remnants of the German 7th Army were being cut to pieces as the Allied forces squeezed the German escape corridor narrower and narrower. They could not shut it in time to bottle up Field Marshal von Kluge's entire German force between Argentan and Falaise, although the retreating troops were badly mauled as they escaped through the neck.
Battling to hold a beachhead
August 15, 1944
THE LANDINGS GO ON DESPITE OPPOSITION.
A tremendous column of water rises high above the shore off Southern France as Allied forces battle against Nazi defenders to establish a beachhead during the first stage of the landings. Through the barbed wire in the foreground the gray outline of a landing craft can be seen, while, at the left, a Navy photographer records the action with his camera.
Good news for the people of Florence
August 15, 1944
THE INVASION IS ON
Crowds listen to the PWB sound truck announcing the invasion of Southern France. In the background is the famous cathedral of Santa Maria Del Fiore, one of the great treasures of this ancient city. By the 15th most of the Germans had been driven out of this capital of the Renaissance, but the complete deliverance of the city was not to come for another week.
And just ahead lies southern France
August 15, 1944
DASHING THROUGH THE WATER TO A NEW ADVENTURE
LCA's going into shore on the morning of August 15 as the Allies invaded the French Riviera section. These landings were made possible by Commandoes, who, their faces daubed with paint and charcoal, paddled ashore in rubber boats. They scaled rocky cliffs in the darkness, hit hard and fast, and completely surprised and overwhelmed the defenders of the German-controlled defenses.
The loyal French and the Allies
August, 1944
SHOWING WHERE THE ENEMY FLED
A loyal Frenchman shows an advancing American infantry patrol the direction in which a retreating German patrol fled, as men of the 7th Army moved in to mop up any remaining signs of resistance during the advance along the road to Toulon. Citizens of France, smarting under four years of Nazi rule, were glad to give the Allies whatever assistance they could against the foe who so long had besmirched the fair land of "La France."
A soldier of France returns to France
August 15, 1944
HOME AGAIN AFTER A LONG TREK
General Jacques Le Clerc walks along a pier with members of his staff as he returned to France to take over command of French regulars. Below, a group of Frenchmen who poured out of the hills to aid the Allied assault troops in the invasion of Southern France, point out enemy emplacements, hidden in the sand dunes back of the beachheads, to American infantrymen. It did not take long to clear the troublesome spots.
The invasion of southern France is a success
August 15, 1944
THE MORNING AFTER D DAY
Aboard a ship off an island near the southern coast of France, are left to right, Lieutenant General Brehon Somervell, commanding general of the Army Service Forces, Robert P. Patterson, under secretary of War, and Lieutenant General Jacob L. Devers, deputy supreme commander in the Mediterranean Theatre. They pronounced the invasion a great success, and they all agreed that it was accomplished with fewer casualties than they anticipated.
Single file through a street in France
August, 1944
ON THE PROWL FOR NAZI SNIPERS
After the Allies broke out of the Normandy peninsula the Nazis realized they were in a highly perilous position. They were in danger of being encircled and hacked to bits. In this dilemma the German 7th Army took the offensive southwest of Falaise but without any success. Here, American G.I.'s advance through the streets of Mamers, France.
Moving through a sleepy town
August 15, 1944
ON THE LOOKOUT FOR SNIPERS
Crouching alongside the Casino building in the French town of Dinard, American infantrymen advance despite the harassing fire of German snipers still active in this town. Dinard was one of the objectives during the first part of the advance toward Toulon and Lyon. In all of these towns the Germans were making "suicide" stands against the Allies.
Storming out the "Madman of St. Malo"
August, 1944
BRINGING PRESSURE ON A NAZI
The prize for stubbornness during the early part of August went to Colonel von Aulock, commander of the garrison at St. Malo, on the north Breton coast. Knowing he was doomed he refused to surrender on the grounds that it was not compatible with the honor of a German soldier. Here, the crew of a three-inch gun in the streets of St. Malo tried to change his mind.
Putting the finishing touches on St. Malo
August 17, 1944
A NAZI STRONGHOLD GIVES UP THE FIGHT
American troops wave "Old Glory" atop the Citadel in St. Malo after that bastion fell following a concentrated four-day assault by American troops. In the second picture, a member of an American infantry unit keeps a watchful eye out for any German who may be left behind as the artillery blasts away at the Citadel, the last remaining stronghold in this town on the North Breton coast. The Germans put up a terrific battle for this point, and finally were compelled to surrender, but not until casualties on both sides reached enormous figures.
The Nazis try a night raid on a French harbor
August 17, 1944
SCANNING THE SKIES FOR THE ATTACKERS
Allied ships of every description, lining the harbor at St. Tropez, in southern France, send their searchlights into the clouds as they try to outline the Nazi attackers and bring them into line for the anti-aircraft gunners. On the boat, at left, an Allied gunner "lets go" at the planes which tried to "slow up" the invasion.
Taking a general for a ride
August 17, 1944
A PRIZE CATCH IN THE DRIVE FROM THE SOUTH
Major General Robert T. Frederick, commander of the 1st Special Task Force, in jeep (front) with a captured German general (rear), during the early strides made by the 7th Army as it plunged inland from the beachheads established on the southern coast of France two days earlier. Thousands of prisoners and valuable equipment were captured.
The "Underground" comes above ground
August 19, 1944
THE MAQUIS RISE IN FRANCE
Back at their stands for the first time since 1940, when the Germans invaded France, these members of the FFI and French soldiers stand guard at a captured pillbox. In the picture below, members of the Maquis do their job with relish and enthusiasm as they tear down a German headquarters sign in a French town after its liberation from the retreating Germans.
The Japanese visited here
August 19, 1944
AIDING THE GERMAN U-BOATS
The interior view of a bar used by German U-boat officers in Lorient, France, reveals that Japanese officers were apparently guests at this bar, as is evidenced by their names carved in the rafters along with those of their Nazi hosts. Below, prisoners taken by the Allies during a morning shower on the outskirts of Coutances, France.
Churchill is "shot" in Italy
August, 1944
JUST A MOMENT, PLEASE
Prime Minister Winston Churchill, touring the 5th Army front, gets his picture taken by an American mascot of the 34th Division in the Castiglioncello area. Below, Americans of Japanese descent, members of the 100th Infantry Battalion, 34th Division, examine a still-smouldering German vehicle which they captured during their drive in the Leghorn area.
Tackling problems on the Italian front
August, 1944
CANADIANS MEET A SITUATION
In the background of picture at top, is the entrance to one of the deep caves found along the Italian front, which served as protection against dive bombers. Here, a group of men make hasty repairs at this improvised workshop. Below, a view of a water purifying unit of the Canadian Army on a Sacco River waterpoint near Pofi, with trucks lined up for rations.
Amid the ruins of Myitkyina
August, 1944
ON THE JOB ON A DISTANT FRONT
An American sniper, using to advantage a second story window, alertly watches for the slightest movement that would disclose the position of a careless Japanese. A mortar shell has entered through the roof and made a shambles of the building's interior. The strong brick construction proved a good defensive position for the Japanese and Chinese during this long fight.
The Japanese leave their dead behind
August, 1944
PROGRESS IN THE ASIA CAMPAIGN
As the Japanese were driven out of the town of Myitkyina, their dead defenders were left grotesquely sprawled near the base of the positions they were ordered to defend until death. No longer will they yell their battle cry of "blood for the Emperor." A Chinese soldier stoically views the havoc wrought by his comrades during the heavy fighting.
Some recruits for the Burma campaign
August, 1944
MORE HEADACHES FOR THE JAPANESE
A detail of American soldiers is shown with K-9 replacements, first brought into the India-Burma theatre in July. The dogs were used for patrolling and perimeter guard, and had been used with great success in other campaigns in the South Pacific. They had been fighting for more than a year alongside men of the Army, Marines and Navy.
As the caissons keep rolling along
August, 1944
COLORFUL PATTERN AT NIGHT
The incessant artillery fire of Allied forces in France was one of the major assets employed by the Allies in wearing down the Nazi defenders. It has been said about artillery that it keeps awake those that it doesn't kill or wound, making the infantryman's job easier. Here, an American battery "let's go" in the dead of the night.
The battle for France
August, 1944
STORY OF THE LIBERATION
The trail of the white arrows records the German defeat in France. After the landings on the shores of Normandy, the Americans and British were bottled up for weeks, although Cherbourg was taken on June 27. On July 26 the Americans broke out below Avranches, and, on August 9, the British pushed through at Caen. The pocketing of the German armies in the Normandy trap was the decisive factor in the battle for France and made the lightning sweep to the east possible.
An American attack in France
August, 1944
INFANTRY IN ACTION
American infantrymen dash across an open field in the face of heavy machine gun fire to engage S.S. troopers in close battle during the advance in the general direction of Paris. The soldier in foreground lies prone to fire a rifle grenade, while at the right a bazooka gunner races along with his comrades to join the attack on the highly defended Nazi strongholds.
The Canadians advance along the Seine
August, 1944
STREET SCENE IN FRANCE
A Canadian corporal stands guard on a street corner in a liberated French town on the Seine as two dead German soldiers lie covered by canvas near the feet of the Allied soldier. In the picture below, a Canadian jeep tows German equipment from a cave used by the Nazis for storage and concealment from Allied airmen.
Crossing a stream in the Burma theatre
August 20, 1944
TOUGH GOING FOR MEN AND JEEP
Men of a Signal-Corps unit float a jeep across the Mogaung River to the town of Kamaing, Burma. They were kept on their course by a cable line extended across the stream at this point. The jeep has been shrouded in a canvas sack-like arrangement which gives it buoyancy, the prescribed method for making a boat out of a motor car.
The Nazis did not have this touch
August 20, 1944
FUN FOR THE KIDDIES
An American corporal gives a few sleight of hand tricks for the entertainment of French refugee children in the town of Plabennec, France, after the town was liberated from its Nazi conquerors. The smiles on the faces of these young citizens of France, who will be part of a new nation, indicate where their allegiance will be centered in the days of peace.
New Russian frontier
August, 1944
ONCE MORE CLEAR OF THE INVADER
As the fifth year ended, Russia's soil was free of the enemy. In the north, Finland was still under German domination, although she was about ready to surrender. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were slowly being cleared of the Nazis. In the central sector, Russia was in Poland and was threatening East Prussia. In the south Rumania had officially surrendered and Bulgaria was tottering.
Chartres greets General De Gaulle
August 23, 1944
ANOTHER CITY IS LIBERATED
Cheering crowds welcomed the leader of the Free French, General Charles De Gaulle, as he visited the city of Chartres, on a tour of inspection of the liberated areas. The tour culminated in his triumphal entry into Paris just a few days later. With the fall of Chartres the Allies had advanced to within fifty miles of the French capital.
Rejoicing and sadness in Chartres
August 23, 1944
WELCOME TO THE LEADER OF THE FRENCH
General Charles De Gaulle acknowledging the tumultuous welcome given him by the residents of Chartres, France. The General is speaking from the steps of the City Hall in the liberated city. In the picture below, members of the FFI attend a funeral service in Chartres for their comrades who gave their lives in the liberation of the city.
The Reds take an important Rumanian town
August 23, 1944
JASSY FALLS TO THE RUSSIANS
In a drive which netted 60,000 prisoners in six days, the Soviet Army captured the important town of Jassy, and pushed on down the Siret River toward its junction with the Danube. Here, top, Russian soldiers are shown attacking an inhabited locality, and below, Soviet tanks and infantrymen push ahead in their great drive for the gateway to central Rumania.
A welcome "present" from the Nazis
August, 1944
THE STOVE THEY LEFT BEHIND THEM
In their hasty retreat the Germans left behind this field stove which was pressed into service by the Allied Civil Affairs Bureau at their refugee center in France. A refugee cook is trying out his culinary art for the benefit of other French civilians. The job of supplying the hard-pressed French with food was one of the toughest to face the Allied governments.
Rumania quits the Axis camp
August 23, 1944
DRIVEN OUT BY THE RUSSIAN ADVANCE
On the eastern front the Nazis faced still another defeat, both military and political, which might mean the loss of the Balkans and the complete disintegration of the ring of Axis satellites. As the Red Army unleashed a new offensive toward the Ploesti oil fields and Bucharest, young King Michael announced Rumania had accepted the Soviet-British-American armistice terms and would henceforth fight on the side of the United Nations. Apparently the Rumanian decision caught the Germans by surprise, for not until twelve hours later did Berlin reveal that it had been deserted by one Balkan regime. Germany pleaded with Rumanians not to follow the "traitor king", but to shed their blood with the Germans. Hitler's hold on the Balkans was slipping.
The Nazis put up a hard fight to hold Brest
August, 1944
SHOOTING IT OUT ON THE STREETS
While one American soldier sprawls amid the rubble in a street of this great port, another crouches in a doorway with pistol aimed at snipers hiding out across the street. Below, infantrymen dash across a street as a white phosphorus shell explodes almost in their midst, during the bitter fighting for this city which did not capitulate until September 20.
Fierce fighting for the city of Toulon
August 24, 1944
THE 7TH ARMY MEETS RESISTANCE
The Americans in their drive through Southern France found that the foe was making suicide stands at Marseille and Toulon, with the heaviest resistance at Toulon. One of the strongest points of resistance in the latter city was the powder cellar, shown above, which French tanks and half-tracks shelled, and which was captured with the aid of the police.
After heavy fighting for Toulon
August 24, 1944
A GREAT PORT TAKES A BEATING
After a heavy bombardment by two battleships and six cruisers which poured 1,400 rounds into this fortress, the enemy still continued to fight back desperately, even lowering anti-aircraft guns for use as artillery. They swung the coastal guns around and trained them on targets inland. Here, knocked out vehicles and German dead line the streets.
Along the beach in southern France
August, 1944
American troops advance inland after winning the fight for the beachhead in southern France. At right center is a huge hole that American guns blasted in the 8-foot steel and concrete wall running the whole length of the beach.
The day of glory arrives for Paris
August 25, 1944
"LE JOUR DE GLOIRE EST ARRIVE"
Paris liberated after four years of German tyranny—this was the announcement that swept the civilized world on Wednesday, August 23. The next day the world learned that this announcement had been premature, and that parts of the great French city were still infested with German troopers who were still holding out. It was not until two days later, August 25, that Paris was actually free and enemy resistance (discounting the sniper incident) had ceased. What actually happened was that on August 21, 50,000 French armed patriots began fighting the German garrison within the city. After five days of fighting the German commander called for a truce and agreed to surrender. Having gained time to reorganize his defense, he violated the truce and once more took up the task of battling the patriots for possession of the city. The Allied command had conceived and supported the idea of the city being liberated by Frenchmen. When it was found that the patriots needed help, General Omar N. Bradley, commander of the 12th Army Group, pulled the 2nd French Armored Division out of its position in the Seine and sent it, with certain American forces, toward Paris. A series of obstacles outside the city were overcome, and on late Thursday, the 24th, the vanguard of General Jacques Le Clerc's French troops reached the heart of the city. On Friday, French headquarters proclaimed the liberation, announcing that the German commander had surrendered to General Le Clerc. General De Gaulle arrived in triumph to broadcast to the population and on Saturday the streets of Paris resounded to the tramp of marching men as the Allies passed in review before the Allied commanders. The Allied forces found a Paris strangely unchanged despite four years of Nazi rule. Most every person had some relative still in a prison camp or a compulsory labor group in Germany. But the spirits of the Parisians remained high. The immediate need was for greater food supplies. Paris had been cut off from the rest of France for days and its meagre food reserve had been exhausted. Above, left to right, front row, General Bradley, General Dwight Eisenhower, supreme Allied Commander; General Joseph Koenig, military commander of Paris; and British Air Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder, deputy Allied commander.
A toast to the liberation of Paris
August 25, 1944
PARIS EST LIBERE
A toast with rare old cognac, that this French resident of Cherbourg had hidden for the day of liberation, is drunk with one of the American soldiers in Cherbourg, as "La Presse", the Cherbourg newspaper, shown on the table, heralds the French capital's liberation from four years of Wehrmacht rule. This scene was repeated in thousands of French homes and cafes.
Snipers mar Victory Day
August 26, 1944
CIVILIANS DODGE NAZI BULLETS
Thousands of Parisians were thrown into panic and the great liberation parade was broken up when Nazi snipers, stationed on roof tops along the Rue de Rivoli, opened fire during the celebration in honor of American and French troops. General De Gaulle had just passed by and received the plaudits of the crowd when a shot rang out from a roof top on the corner of the Rue de Bourdonnais and the Rue de Rivoli. The firing increased in tempo as it was returned by the FFI and American and French troopers. The picture at left clearly illustrates the panic as the firing spread to side streets and the milling citizens vainly sought safety. The panic was greatest around the Hotel de Ville and Notre Dame Cathedral, the latter becoming a battle zone just as General De Gaulle entered it to attend mass. While most of the German troopers were soon rounded up or "liquidated", French collaborationists were still firing away the next day. Despite the wild shooting the casualties were comparatively light, a few spectators being killed and a dozen or so wounded.
Americans on the Champs Elysees
August 26, 1944
After twenty-six years American soldiers once more march along the famous French boulevard in an hour of victory. While the war was over for the doughboys of 1918, these Gl's were Germany bound with the bigger job ahead of them.
After 26 years—Americans march in Paris
August 26, 1944
VICTORY PARADE IN PARIS
American troops of an infantry division march along the Champs Elysees, as their fathers did in 1918. The world-famous Arc de Triomphe, which shelters the Tomb of France's Unknown Soldier of the First World War, is in the background. In the foreground, mechanized equipment of the French 2nd Division line up in front of the Arc during ceremonies in honor of the Unknown Soldier.
A Paris landmark still stands
August 26, 1944 I
THE OLD AND THE NEW IN THE CAPITAL
Parisians see their first Allied "duck" and wave greetings to the occupants on the Trocadero. The Eiffel tower, which had been used by the Germans as an observation post, looks down on its old friends. The tricolor of France had replaced the swastika, and the old rickety elevator was ready to take Allied soldiers up for a view of the famous city.
American equipment on the Champs Elysees
August 26, 1944
PARIS GREETS HER LIBERATORS
Parisians line the world-famous boulevard to cheer the American troops on parade toward the Arc de Triomphe. Row after row of mechanized military equipment rolls past the throng of happy French people as Americans demonstrate the might of the mechanized army which had driven the Nazis from the capital only ten weeks after the initial landings in France.
Allies make a big haul in Paris
August, 1944
CROWDED QUARTERS FOR THE SUPER RACE
In the Hotel Majestic, Paris, former Wehrmacht headquarters, these Germans, many of them officers, are collected together in the rooms where they once ruled Paris. Below, American G.I.'s examine pictures of high ranking Germans discovered in a French hotel. The soldier on the right seems to be getting a big kick out of the portrait of Adolf Hitler.
No rationing of gasoline here
August 26, 1944
THE GERMANS LOSE MORE OF THEIR SUPPLIES
Captured when American and French forces occupied the main parts of the French capital, this stock of German gasoline quickly disappeared as Parisians helped themselves outside the headquarters of the Wehrmacht, on Avenue Klebor, the morning after the liberation. Note the mechanized equipment left behind by the Germans in their mad retreat.
French general who "took" Paris
August 25, 1944
LEADER OF THE F.F.I.
General Jacques LeClerc with some of his French soldiers. The surrender of the German commandant at Paris to this soldier of France was to climax a march to Paris which had begun in February, 1941. Then they left Fort Lamy, near Lake Chad, in French Equatorial Africa, crossed the Sahara and fought in North Africa, Italy, and finally returned to Paris in triumph.
The tricolor flies over Notre Dame
August 26, 1944
A FAMOUS CHURCH LOOKS DOWN ON WAR
Notre Dame Cathedral, spared in the first World War, is the background for conflict in the second World War. The burned-out German truck in the foreground, almost at the cathedral's front door, was left by Germans as they fled from the fury of the French patriots during the two days of fighting which preceded the entry of the Allies into the French capital. There was heavy sniper firing about the cathedral when De Gaulle attended services on the day of liberation.
Action in Paris before the liberation
August, 1944
PANIC IN THE CAPITAL
In the picture at top, bending low and scurrying for cover, frightened Parisians try to escape the bullets whistling down from rooftop sniper nests. Panic reigned as street fighting broke up the official reception to General Charles De Gaulle on his arrival in the capital. In the second picture, members of the French Forces of the Interior snipe from a window at the Prefecture of Police during the rioting. As one man fires a sub-machine gun, another crouches beside him, reloading. A comrade covers them from the rear with a revolver as Frenchmen fought to wrest their capital from the Germans.
"Come on out with your hands up!"
August 25, 1944
A GOOD DAY'S CATCH
Fifty-six German prisoners of war come out with their hands in the air to give themselves up to an American sergeant who used his fluent German to talk them into surrendering. He was under the impression that he was talking to a small group. In the picture below, German prisoners, 10,000 strong, line up for their lunch at an enclosure in liberated France.
Off to join in the fight for democracy
August, 1944
THE FRENCH COME OUT IN THE OPEN
Rifles slung over their backs, four 'citizen soldiers' of France leave their homes to join the swelling forces of France—fighting in the open after years of balking the Nazis through their activities in the "underground." Among the groups they might join are the Maquis and the F.P.T.P.—French Partisans Franc Tireurs.
An American officer and his prize catch
August 25, 1944
BRINGING IN THE PRISONERS
After being captured by a German patrol, Lieutenant Clarence E. Coggins convinced a German major that escape from the Allies was impossible. The major then released the lieutenant to arrange terms of surrender with his superiors. Here, his prisoners march through Pont De Claiz, just south of Grenoble, on their way to the train and internment.
Balloon protection against the robot bombs
August, 1944
A TRAP FOR THE NAZI SECRET WEAPON
During the eighty-day attack of the flying bomb, Britain marshalled 2,000 barrage balloons to protect London and Southern England. Stretched as far as the eye can see, is this barrage, the greatest that was ever put into the air. The balloons accounted for almost three hundred of the 8,000 bombs launched by the enemy.
Guarding England's shipping lanes
August, 1944
HIS MAJESTY'S SEA PORTS
As the fifth year of the war drew to a close, the English government disclosed one of its best kept secrets. For some time sea forts, such as pictured above, had been guarding Britain's shipping lanes along both the Channel and east coasts. The forts were constructed ashore and then towed to sea and sunk on sandbanks. They were manned by Army personnel and possessed adequate living accommodations. Designed primarily to guard against mine-laying planes, the forts formed a first line defense against any invasion attempt. Above are seven forts joined by catwalks. Below is the sea fort "Knot John" which was manned by Royal Marines. No information was released as to the exact location of the installations pictured.
Valley of desolation in France
August 27, 1944
THE FRENCH SEE ALLIED ARMOR
Thundering through a valley of rubble that was once a quiet French village, Canadian tanks speed toward the rocket-gun coast after the break-through from Caen and the capture of Falaise. These troops were part of the northern arm of the mammoth Allied pincers that closed in on the German Seventh Army and a few days later were to return to Dieppe in triumph.
The way of the collaborationist is hard
August 27, 1944
THEIR CROWNING GLORY IS GONE
In the picture above, a French girl, a resident of Laval who has been accused of collaborating with the Nazis, has been marked with the swastika and forced to parade the streets displaying pictures of her former friends. Right, half-naked women, also accused of collaborating, are marched through a Paris street. The swastika has been painted on their foreheads. Both pictures show that the women had been shorn of their hair before the start of the ceremonies. Oddly enough, these disciplinary measures were always engineered by French males who took it upon themselves to express the national indignation over the behavior of a small number of French women during the occupation.
A very dejected-looking Nazi general
August 27, 1944
HOW THE MIGHTY FALL AS THE ALLIES GAIN
This German general was captured near Fismes, France, during the rapid advance of a U.S. armored unit. The general looks dejected, to say the least, and well he may, as the battle for France was ending and the beginning of the battle for Belgium and Germany was getting under way with the Allies roaring along on all the battle fronts.
It's not all fighting in sunny France
August, 1944
IN TWO CAPTURED TOWNS
In the picture at top, the famous Twelfth Century Cathedral of St. Julien in Le Mans forms the setting for the scene as children gather around an American jeep and a convoy as it moves toward the front. Below, a G.I. strings wires on the side of a house in Grenoble under the watchful eyes of a group of French girls. In all parts of France, wherever the Allies moved ahead, the French, for the most part, went all out in their efforts to cooperate with the liberators of their homeland.
Two ways of crossing a French river
August, 1944
BUT THEY GOT ACROSS
Over a bridge erected across the river, Canadian armored vehicles (top), cross the Seine in pursuit of Germans fleeing toward the rocket bomb coast. On the right, soldiers are fixing a loose plank and strengthening the bridge. In the bottom picture, German machine gun fire comes perilously close to U.S. engineers who are ferrying a vehicle across the Seine at Montreau.
Strange sights on a French street
August 28, 1944
SILENT OBSERVERS OF THE ALLIED ADVANCE
Searching for enemy snipers, top, American soldiers silently traverse this street in the business section of St. Malo, as this dummy model from a dress shop gazes after them. Another model is a casualty in the street. Below, a Frenchwoman takes over the traffic control on the Boulevard Foch, in Angers, the day after the city's liberation.
The British pass through war-torn streets
August 28, 1944
DRIVING ALONG THE ROCKET-LAUNCHING COAST
Walking single file, and with eyes peering intently to each side, these British soldiers on patrol march through a town in the Pas-de-Calais sector, piled high with rubble and debris from constant shelling and bombing. Below, among the powerful flame-throwers now being used by the British Armies in France is the ferocious "Wasp". Sending a fearsome stream of fire into German strongpoints, the flame-thrower is fitted to a carrier with a bullet-proof body. In the "Wasp", as in all other weapons of this kind, a special type of fuel is used.
Dead cattle provide cover for Americans
August, 1944
A RURAL SCENE IN THE ALLIED ADVANCE
Two American soldiers duck low behind the carcasses of dead cattle as shells whine over their heads in the drive to the border of Luxembourg. Another cow grazes contentedly on the side of the road, oblivious to the danger. Below, crouching as they run, American infantrymen scurry after their tank as it lumbers after the retreating Nazis.
Showing the Nazis some real shooting
August, 1944
BRITISH AND AMERICAN GUNS IN ACTION
In the picture at top, a 155 mm. gun, manned by a battery of the Royal Artillery, fires at Nazi positions along the shrinking German front in France. Below, American troops go in for the kill after knocking out a giant Tiger (Mark VI) tank in a town outside of Paris. Smoke rises from the immobilized tank as it falls prey to the Americans.
Brest still holds out in bitter fighting
August 29, 1944
THE FIGHT CONTINUES
FOR A FAMOUS WORLD-WAR PORT
An American soldier dashes for cover (top), as vehicles of a U.S. column become the target for Nazi guns in this great French port. Smoke from near, or direct hits on the column fills the air. Below, streaking for cover from Nazi sniper fire, this American runs past bomb-blasted buildings in Brest, as a hail of lead follows him.
A cross-channel gun is silenced
August 29, 1944
RETIRED FROM THE WAR
While one British soldier stands on the barrel, another gunner, left, examines the opening on the 14 inch "London Range" German gun, silenced forever, as the men of the Empire smashed along the rocket launching coast. A British sailor, right, examines the protective mail chain curtain which hangs over the front of the gunpit on this Nazi monster.
Designed for enemy wall cracking
August, 1944
BRITISH EQUIPMENT ROLLING ALONG
The AVRE leads a long line of armored vehicles over a road in France. A tank, similar to the famed Churchill, it features a special mortar, mounted in a turret with a short, stub barrel. The mortar, known as the "Petard" can hurl a charge containing many times the weight of any other projectile. Below, British armor passes a Somme cemetery of 1914-18.
Warfare reminiscent of 1917-18
August, 1944
A LEAP FOR SAFETY
American infantrymen advancing on the heels of the retreating Germans outside of Paris, leap for the safety of a shell hole as a Nazi shell splits the air overhead. The Allied advance was preceded by a terrific air bombardment. Below, as these Yanks plow through the sticky mud in their sector, some of them are reminded of stories their dads told them of the last war, which would indicate that "General Mud" is no respector of periods.
A French woman pleads her innocence
August 29, 1944
SHE DOESN'T WANT TO LOSE HER HAIR
A French woman, alleged to have collaborated with the Germans (the same Nazis charged with the cold-blooded murder of twenty-seven F.F.I. men at Chatou), pleads as she hears her sentence—a close-cropped haircut to brand her as dealing with the enemy. In every town and village of France this was the penalty meted out to the women who had aided the foe. The emotional strain expressed on the face of this defendant is most evident.
The mail gets through and a G.I. is happy
August, 1944
KEEPING UP THE MORALE OF A FIGHTING MAN
No question about the morale of this fighting Marine. He wears an ear-to-ear grin after hitting the jack-pot at mail call outside a fleet post office somewhere in the Pacific. The mail call was the first held following the seizure of the island and this Devil Dog really came up with his full quota of letters.
A British gun and a German gun train
August, 1944
NEW BRITISH HOWITZER IN ACTION
A gun crew is shown (top) preparing to fire the 7.2 howitzer against the Nazis along the rocket coast. The gun weighs ten tons and fires a 200 lb. shell up to a range of 16,000 yards. The tires are five feet, six inches in diameter. Below, all that remains of a Nazi gun train as found by the Canadians at Montreuil, in the advance to the city of Boulogne.
Jap atrocities on Guam
August, 1944
SOME LIVE TO TELL
Before they were wiped out, Jap soldiers, retreating on Guam, wrought vengeance on the peaceful natives in typically brutal fashion. Below are two Chamarro children being treated by a native nurse for wounds received when they were bayoneted and left for dead in a bomb crater by the fleeing Japs. Above are the bodies of a group not so fortunate. These natives, with hands tied behind their backs, were driven into the jungle, bayoneted and beheaded. One war correspondent counted 42 bodies of Chamarros who had been disposed of in this fashion. Having failed in two years of occupation to gain the respect and loyalty of the Chamarros, the Japanese killed as many as they could before their own resistance ceased.
After the Canadians entered Falaise
August, 1944
SOME REBUILDING NEEDED HERE
Falaise, the target for which Allied forces put up such a bitter fight, is shown a few days after the Canadians entered, its shell and bomb-shattered streets and buildings bearing mute testimony to the terrific pounding the city received from both friend and foe, before the Allies had gained complete mastery. The only opposition remaining came from isolated elements of German armored and infantry divisions, which sought to keep the pincers open in an effort to extract slower moving infantry. Below British infantrymen move cautiously through the wreckage of buildings in a town on the road to Boulogne.
The fight for a jade center in Burma
August 30, 1944
TENGCHUNG IS SOUGHT AFTER BY THE ALLIES
This picture gives an idea of the heavy fighting that went on before this great center of the jade industry fell to the Allies early in September. This ancient center of Chinese culture was the first city east of Burma to be liberated by the Allies and as the fifth year of the war drew to a close bloody warfare for the center was still going on.
Nazi torture chamber unearthed in Paris
August 31, 1944
WHERE GERMANS AMUSED THEMSELVES
This torture chamber (top), being inspected by F.F.I. men and Paris police, was found in the rear of the French Ministry of Aviation building. It was formerly a rifle range, and was converted into a sound-proof, fireproof, chamber, where prisoners were either burned alive, or tied to the pillars and shot, then buried in a common grave. As shown in the picture below, F.F.I. men are examining the re-opened graves. Four boxes, containing as many bodies, are shown beside the common grave.
Chateau-Thierry and its liberator
August 31, 1944
MEMENTO OF ANOTHER WAR
Having cleared all the Germans from the Seine between Paris and Troyes, the American troops began to move north and east to flank the German retreat route from the Channel coast to Belgium and Germany. Not until Laon was reached was it revealed that the American 1st Army, under Lieutenant General Courtney H. Hodges (right), was responsible for the thrust in the center which recaptured so many places made famous in the last war, including Chateau-Thierry and Soissons which fell without a fight. In the picture above, dwarfed by its hugeness, three American soldiers stand and look at the monument, high on a hill overlooking Chateau-Thierry, which was erected by the United States as a memorial to American doughboys and French soldiers who fought in that area during the first World War. The memorial has been untouched by this war.
Mail for the Pacific
August, 1944
NAVY MAIL GETS THROUGH
This towering stack of mailbags on a dock at Espiritu Santo indicates that the folks at home have responded to the urgings of those who see mail from home as a great morale builder. This allotment, only a part of that designated for this Pacific base, is scheduled for Christmas delivery. The bulgings in the sacks give promise of many gift packages.
Verdun falls to Patton's men
August 31, 1944
MEMORIES OF ANOTHER WAR
Covering sixty-five miles in one day, men of General Patton's 3rd Army entered the famous fortress city of Verdun and captured it against slight opposition. One of the keystones of the Maginot Line, some of its fortifications had been demolished. In this picture, five American G.l.'s cook their dinner at the base of the monument to men of the First World War.
Devastation in a Chinese city
August 31, 1944
THIS WAS ONCE A HOME IN CHINA
American troops and American-trained and equipped Chinese troops entered the ancient jade center of Tengchung during the last week of August, but the city did not fall to the Allies until after five weeks of bloody warfare. In this picture, a blind refugee, led by a small boy, makes his way through the ruins of what was once his home in Tengchung.
Lwow again in Russian hands
August, 1944
RECONQUEST
Soviet troops and equipment are shown (above) in a Lwow street after the re-occupation of the Polish city which was started in the last days of July. The history of Lwow since 1939 has been crowded with changes. In September of that year it became a part of Russia, according to the terms of the Hitler-Stalin pact. In 1941 it was taken by the Germans who held it for three years. Below, Soviet troopers make prisoner of a German motor cyclist in the Lwow area.
Covering an advance across the Seine
August, 1944
TICKLISH WORK, BUT NECESSARY
American riflemen crouch behind a barricade on the shores of the Seine River, near the town of Montreau, France, covering G.I.'s and equipment crossing the river on pontoon ferries built by U.S. Army engineers. Most of the opposition was from scattered units of the once powerful German armies. There was no longer any semblance of a German line in France.
Two methods of cleaning up
August, 1944
HALMAHERA AND GUAM
American bombers of the U.S. Army Fifth Air Force attack at low level the Wasile pier on Halmahera Island, the last Japanese bastion between New Guinea and the Philippines. This was one of the many air raids on Halmahera that preceded an invasion that followed weeks later. Halmahera, located equidistant between Celebes and the Dutch half of New Guinea, was an important outpost for the Japanese on the Philippines. Below, the arrival of a water truck on Guam proved a big event to the Marines who were engaged in mopping-up operations on that island. Fresh water was a priceless luxury after the smoke and grime of battle.
Generals confer in a plane
August 31, 1944
DISCUSSING THE NEXT MOVES
IN THE BATTLE OF FRANCE
Two Lieutenant Generals, two helmets, the crew and one jeep, are the contents of this C-47 plane used by Lieutenant General Omar N. Bradley, right, and Lieutenant General George S. Patton, left, as they return from a tour of the Brittany peninsula. General Bradley had been given equal rank with General Montgomery shortly before this picture was taken.
Comforting the grief-stricken family of a patriot
August 31, 1944
AFTER A MASS EXECUTION
An American soldier comforts the grief-stricken family of one of the twenty-seven Maquis who were executed en masse by the Germans when they attempted to seize the garrison of a town on the road to Brest. The Germans quelled the uprising and the Maquis were executed and buried in a shallow grave. The executioners were captured and made to exhume the bodies.
After two years—Canadians return to Dieppe
September 1, 1944
NO TURNING BACK THIS TIME
French residents of this famous resort town line the streets as Canadian soldiers march into the town. It was at Dieppe that the British and Canadian Commandoes staged their brilliant, but unsuccessful, raid on the morning of August 19, 1942. In this drive along the coast, the British had an additional motive to spur them on—capture of robot bomb launching sites.
Status, as the fifth year ended
September 1, 1944
THE STORY AFTER FIVE YEARS
While the Allies were closing in on all sides, the Axis nations and their few remaining satellites were still in possession of large and critical areas of territory. The German hordes had been pushed out of France and Russia, but still kept a strong grip on central Europe. Japan had lost many important Pacific island bases, but still held huge slices of the Far East. While the prospects were bright for a quick end to the European struggle, it was estimated that the Pacific war had one or two years to run. With the sixth year coming up, the Allies still faced much "blood, sweat and tears".
VICTORY VOLUME IV
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