So stated a radio address from Douglas MacArthur, on this the opening day of the Battle of Leyte.
A Japanese task force was launched to address the situation in the Philippines.
Members of E Troop, 2nd Squadron, 7th Cav. Regt., engaging the Japs at close range, 100 yards inland from White Beach, Leyte Island, P.I. 20 October, 1944.
The Red Army and Bulgarian partisans took Belgrade.
The Western Allies commenced Operation Pheasant in the Netherlands.
The Guatemalan Revolution began with the overthrow of the government.
From the turret of a medium tank, Cpl. Eugene McKay, Calumet City, Ill., searches for Germans in Aachen, Germany, while a tank destroyer, in the background, moves on German positions. 20 October, 1944. 745th Tank Battalion and 634th Tank Destroyer Battalion attached to 1st Infantry Division.
Soviet IS2 moving through forest near Vyborg past wounded Red Army troops.
The outnumbered Finns fought the Red Army to a draw in the Vyborg–Petrozavodsk Offensive, which concluded on this day.
The Battle of Studzianki began in Poland as a German counter offensive.
The Germans began the liquidation of the Łódź Ghetto, which would result in 60,000 Jews and some Roma being deported to Auschwitz.
MacArthur received a letter from Roosevelt endorsing MacArthur's plan to make the Philippines the next priority for the Allies in the Pacific.
Sgt. Robert Becker and Sgt. Joe Flores, members of an armored unit, and both from New York City, bring in their first German prisoner in the battle around Brest, France, August 9, 1944.
The 3d Army liberated Le Mans.
The French Provisional Government ordered the Republic restored and Vichy laws nullified.
120th FA in New Guinea, August 9, 1944.
The very first Smokey the Bear poster appeared.
Actor Sam Elliot was born in Sacramento, California.
The Lwów Uprising ended in Polish victory. The combatants would shortly be arrested by the Soviets, with the 1st Ukrainian Front entering that day. It also took Stanislav.
Identity document from occupied Bialystok District.
The Belostock Offensive ended in Soviet victory. The Bialystok District had been a notable region of Polish Jewish settlements before the war. The Germans had by and large murdered the Jewish population there by this day. Film fans may recognize the name as that of the producer portrayed by Zero Mostel in Mel Brook's comedy, The Producers.
The Red Army took Daugavpils in the north, and Siauliai.
The 8th Corps of the 1st Army broke through at Lessy and Periers.
The jet fighter the Gloster Meteor entered active service with No. 616 Squadron RAF. It would be the only jet aircraft to see active service during the war for the Allies.
The Soviet submarine V-1, formerly the HMS Sunfish, was sunk by the RAF when it dove upon the airplane arriving, rather than fire a recognition signal.
Nimitz, MacArthur and Roosevelt were still meeting.
U.S. infantrymen advancing beyond St. Lo, July 26, 1944.
The 1st Army took Marigny and St. Gilles, and crossed the Lessay-Perieres Road.
A really remarkable photograph of US troops near Saint Giles ,with editing marks, July 26, 1944. The armored vehicle appears to be a M3 Lee/Grant, which according to all sources had been fully replaced by the Sherman by this time. It might be a M31 tank retriever, however, which was based on the same vehicle and retained the 75mm gun and the turret. From this angle, the crane would not be visible. The edits clearly intended to cut out evidence of the 75mm gun, which would make the vehicle appear to be a Sherman.
After six months of combat, the Red Army took Narva, ending the Battle for Narva Bridgehead.
The Battle of Ilomantsi began between the Finns and the Red Army.
The 1st Ukrainian Front took Deblin.
President Roosevelt began a two day conference at Pearl Harbor on strategy in the Pacific. At the conference MacArthur urged an advance on the Philippines while Nimitz argued for making Taiwan the first priority and bypassing the Philippines. Roosevelt listened, but did not decide.
Fighting raged on around Aitape.
Japanese forces on Guam launched a banzai charge against Marines fighting for control of the island
The USS Robalo hit a mine sinking the sub off of Palawan Island. There were four survivors who disappeared forever into Japanese captivity.
The I-29 was sunk by the USS Sawfish in a submarine on submarine action.
The U-214 was sunk by the HMS Cooke in the English Channel. The U-2323 hit a mine off Kiel and sank.
A pilot with family in Merriam, Kansas, decided to buzz the family home with disastrous results.
The hard fought Battle of Zapote River occured this day seeing the U.S. Army prevail against much larger numbers from the First Philippine Republic, due to superior arms and training, and Naval support.
The loss in the second-biggest engagement of the Philippine Insurrection caused the Philippine forces to resort to guerilla war thereafter.
Cpt. William H. Sage won the Congressional Medal of Honor for his role in the battle.
With 9 men volunteered to hold an advanced position and held it against a terrific fire of the enemy estimated at 1,000 strong. Taking a rifle from a wounded man, and cartridges from the belts of others, Capt. Sage himself killed 5 of the enemy.
Sage would go on to serve in the Border War in Mexico and rose to the rank of major general during World War One. After the war, he commanded Ft. D. A. Russell in Wyoming, where he became fatally ill. He died in 1922 at age 63, just one month away from retirement.
Douglas MacArthur entered the U.S. Military Academy.
The 41st Infantry Division advanced against heavy Japanese opposition on Biak. At the same time, Gen. MacArthur declared the New Guinea campaign strategically won, while acknowledging that hard fighting remained.
Rudy Giuliani was born in Brooklyn. His rise and fall demonstrates, in a way, how politicians born in the 1940s have been eclipsed by age, and should really no longer be seriously considered for office.
Gen. MacArthur, Colonel Lloyd Lehbras, his aides, and other high officers, landing on the beach at Aitape, New Guinea, 23 April, 1944.
Hollandia fell to US forces and Tadji airfield is taken. However, resistance was met inland at Sabron and the beachheads were experiencing congestion.
F4U crashing on the USS Guadalcanal, April 23, 1944.
The Amagiri was sunk in the Makassar Strait by a mine.
Mussolini agreed to continue permitting Italian troops to be trained in Germany. The best of them were to be used to form a new National Republican Army.
In Italy, U.S. Army PFC John C. Squires lost his life in an action which resulted in his receiving a posthumous Medal of Honor.
For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at risk of life above and beyond the call of duty. At the start of his company's attack on strongly held enemy positions in and around Spaccasassi Creek, near Padiglione, Italy, on the night of 23-April 24, 1944, Pfc. Squires, platoon messenger, participating in his first offensive action, braved intense artillery, mortar, and antitank gun fire in order to investigate the effects of an antitank mine explosion on the leading platoon. Despite shells which burst close to him, Pfc. Squires made his way 50 yards forward to the advance element, noted the situation, reconnoitered a new route of advance and informed his platoon leader of the casualties sustained and the alternate route. Acting without orders, he rounded up stragglers, organized a group of lost men into a squad and led them forward. When the platoon reached Spaccasassi Creek and established an outpost, Pfc. Squires, knowing that almost all of the noncommissioned officers were casualties, placed 8 men in position of his own volition, disregarding enemy machinegun, machine-pistol, and grenade fire which covered the creek draw. When his platoon had been reduced to 14 men, he brought up reinforcements twice. On each trip he went through barbed wire and across an enemy minefield, under intense artillery and mortar fire. Three times in the early morning the outpost was counterattacked. Each time Pfc. Squires ignored withering enemy automatic fire and grenades which struck all around him, and fired hundreds of rounds of rifle, Browning automatic rifle, and captured German Spandau machinegun ammunition at the enemy, inflicting numerous casualties and materially aiding in repulsing the attacks. Following these fights, he moved 50 yards to the south end of the outpost and engaged 21 German soldiers in individual machinegun duels at point-blank range, forcing all 21 enemy to surrender and capturing 13 more Spandau guns. Learning the function of this weapon by questioning a German officer prisoner, he placed the captured guns in position and instructed other members of his platoon in their operation. The next night when the Germans attacked the outpost again he killed 3 and wounded more Germans with captured potato-masher grenades and fire from his Spandau gun. Pfc. Squires was killed in a subsequent action.
Finnish modified Soviet Il-4 bomber, April 23, 1944.
A communist mutiny on five Greek warships (it's always the sailors) was put down by loyal Greek forces.
Also in Greece, the Pyrgoi Massacre took place in which the SS killed 563 men, women and children, with the aid of local Greek accomplices.
Marion Harris, the first white singer to widely sing and record blues, died in a hotel fire caused by her falling asleep with a lit cigarette. She was 48 years old.
Canadian bootlegger Rocco Perri went for a walk in Hamilton Ontario to clear his head and disappeared. It's widely believed he was fitted with cement shoes and drowned, but there are those who assert he lived into the 1950s in the U.S.
First wave of the 1st Cavalry, note all the Thompson Submachineguns.
The Admiralty Islands Campaign began with the dismounted US. 1st Cavalry Division landing on Los Negros Island. What had started as a small landing was converted on the spot by General MacArthur and Admiral Kinkaid to a full scale landing.
MacArthur and Kincaid on Los Negros, February 29, 1944, with Army cameraman T/Sgt Daniel Rocklin.
A-20s on their way to Vesuvius airport after bombing targets at Anzio.
Poor weather prevented an effective continued German effort at Anzio.
The USS Trout was sunk in the East China Sea by the Japanese destroyer Asashimo.
The Red Army prevailed in the Nikopol-Krivol Rog Offensive.
The Commander of the 1st Ukrainian Front, Marshal Nikolai Vatutin, was ambushed by Ukrainian partisans and mortally wounded.
The Battle of Ist was fought between the Free French Navy and a Kriegsmarine element, resulting in a French victory in the Adriatic.
No ball was dropped in Times Square for the second year in a row.
With a strange mixture of abandon and restraint, San Francisco accorded 1943 a reasonable facsimile of the traditional year-end sendoff last night, and then settled back for a more or less sober inspection of A. D. 1944.
San Francisco Examiner.
Friday, given the nature of the celebrations of New Years, is a particularly good day for the end of the year to fall on.
Not everyone was celebrating:
Photo of a U.S air raid on a ball bearing plant near Paris, December 31, 1943.
The Marines secured an airfield on Cape Gloucester; and
The commissioning of the USS Cassin Young, which is a museum ship today (photo on blog included). Ms. Sundin, it should be noted, has an article on museum destroyers. I'd like to visit one. I've been on battleships and submarines, but not destroyers.
Hitler delivered a New Year's message to the Germans admitting that the Third Reich had suffered heavy reverses in and that the upcoming year would require more, and in fact would approach the crisis level. He also noted that the Allies would land on the Atlantic Coast.
It's often noted, and apparently correctly, that the German people didn't really appreciate the dire circumstances they were in until January 1945. While that seems to be true, it's hard to understand, given that they were certainly getting lots of bad news, in this case even from the very top.
It should be noted that the concluding year, 1943, was the one in which not only did German battlefield fortunes begin to massively decline, but that an accompanying massive expansion of the Holocaust began.
In preparation for those landings, Field Marshall Rommel was inspecting fortifications on the coast of Northern France.
Douglas MacArthur visited troops under his command, including this group of Native American soldiers.
From left: Staff Sergeant Virgil Brown (Pima), First Sergeant Virgil F. Howell (Pawnee), Staff Sergeant Alvin J. Vilcan (Chitimacha), General MacArthur, Sergeant Byron L. Tsingine (Diné [Navajo]), Sergeant Larry Dekin (Diné [Navajo]).
Deputy Prime Minister Clement Attlee broadcast a New Years Eve message to the British people promising that the "hour of reckoning" had come for Germany, but also warning that 1944 would involve heavy sacrifice.
The Red Army captured Zhytomyr.
Argentina's President, Gen. Pedro Ramirez, dissolved political parties and restored the requirement of Roman Catholic education in all Argentine public schools.
Henry John Deutschendorf Jr. (John Denver) was born in Rosewell, New Mexico.
Sub Lt. G.C. Morris flying Spitfire P8537 of 761 Squadron attempting land on HMS Ravager without a tail wheel - New Year's Eve 1943.