Tuesday, October 31, 1944. Rescued.

Pvt. Fred T. Huff, 698 Pulaski St., Athens, Ga., one of the soldiers in an American infantry battalion trapped behind German lines.for six days in the Belmont sector, France, eats while waiting for transportation to the rear area for a rest. 31 October, 1944.

U.S. Infantrymen who were cut off by the Germans for six days in the Belmont sector, France, file down the road after being relieved. 31 October, 1944. 1st Battalion, 141st Infantry, 36th Infantry Division.

Bearded Lt. Martin J. Higgins, 29 Garrison Ave., Jersey City, N.J., left, receives a warm handshake from Lt. Charles O. Barry, 120 West St., Williamstown, P.A., when he rejoins his unit in the Belmont sector after being cut off by the Germans for six days. Lt. Higgins was one of the officers with a battalion cut off by the Germans. France. 31 October, 1944.  Note the M1 Carbine has a grenade launching attachment.  1st Battalion, 141st Infantry Regiment, 36th Infantry Division.

The Royal Air Force raided Gestapo headquarters at the Aarhus University in Denmark  The goal was to destroy Gestapo records to aid the Danish resistance.  The raid was conducted, as an earlier on in France had been, with Mosquitos.

The Germans evacuated Salonika.  Remaining Aegean German garrisons were trapped.

German Army Group North was trapped on the Courland Peninsula.

T/5 Miles J. Wermager, center, of Magnomen, Minn., a member of a cavalry unit near Monschau, Germany, receives his first piece of chicken since D-Day from T/4 Frank F. Leichtman, left, of Bresho, S.D. 31 October, 1944.

Complete to a flute, turban, and ersatz snake, TeC 5 Hernry Vin Roten, seated, of Brooklyn, N.Y., muses fellow GIs and pretty guests from the nearby French town of Toul at a Halloween party given by members of an air evacuation holding station. 3rd Army Air Evac. Holding Station. 31 October, 1944.

Last edition:

Monday, October 30, 1944. Pvt. Ross.

Labels: 1940s, 1944, Army, Battle of Leyte, British Army, Dancing, Finnish Army, France, Greek Civil War, Greek Partisans, Heroes, Italy, Kamikaze, Lapland War, Personalities, Polish Army, World War Two

Today in World War II History—October 31, 1939 & 1944

Today in World War II History—October 31, 1939 & 1944: 85 Years Ago—Oct. 31, 1939: British children are advised not to go “guising” (trick-or-treating) due to the blackout. New York World’s Fair closes.

Friday, June 16, 1944. Executions.

Heavy fighting continued on Saipan.

Knocked out Japanese tanks, June 16, 1944.

Beachheads on Saipan were linked, with combat featuring heavy artillery duels by both sides.

US battleships hit Guam, but the invasion of the island was postponed due to the approach of a Japanese fleet, which later turned to link up with a second one.

Carrier task forces raided Iwo Jima, Chichi Jima and Haha Jima.

The Treaty of Vis was signed in Yugoslavia in an attempt by the Western Allies to merge the Yugoslavian government in exile and the Communist partisans in the field.  The treaty provided for an interim post-war government.

The British 21st Army Group in Normandy advanced everywhere along its front.  The U.S. 1st Army crossed the Douvre and captured St. Saveur.

King George VI visited British troops in France.

The U.S. 9th Infantry Division liberated Orglandes.

US troops in Normandy reading their mail.

244 V-1 rockets hit London.

The British 8th Army took Foligno and Spoleto, Italy.   The US 5th Army took Grosseto.

French historian Marc Bloch, age 57, was shot by the Gestapo due to his work for the French Resistance.

George Stinney, a 14-year-old African American convicted of murder of two white girls, was executed in the electric chair, the youngest American to suffer that fate.

His conviction has since been vacated, not that it does him any good, on the basis that he did not receive a fair trial.

Another item on this from Uncle Mike:

June 16, 1944: A Southern State Executes a Black 14-Year-Old

Last prior edition:

Thursday, June 15, 1944. Saipan.

Labels: 1940s, 1944, Army, British Army, Canada, German Wehrmacht, Imperial Japanese Army, Operation Forager, Operation Overlord, Politics, Saipan, Saskatchewan, Socialism, United States Marine Corps, World War Two

Friday, March 24, 1944. Pvt Theodore J. Miller, The Great Escape and the Ardeatine Massacre.

Nineteen year old Marine Corps Pvt. Theodore J. Miller who had become a famous face following being photographed being loaded back onto a landing craft after Eniewetok was killed on Ebon Atoll.

 

Today In Wyoming's History: March 24: 1944   76 Allied officers escaped Stalag Luft 3, which was later the topic of Paul Brickall's book "The Great Escape."

Seventy-six Royal Air Force POWs escaped from a single tunnel from Stalag Luft III in Silesia.  Seventy-three would be recaptured, almost all fairly rapidly.  Fifty of them were subsequently murdered after being recaptured.  

The Gestapo undertook an investigation of the escape and Commandant von Lindeiner-Wildau, who had started off as an assistant to Göring, was removed and threatened with court-martial.  He escaped prosecution by feigning mental illness.  He ended up in command of an infantry unit and was wounded in the Battle of Berlin in 1945.  He had, as commandant, followed the Geneva accords and did have the respect of the prisoners.  He died in 1963 at age 82.

An effort to bring the guilty to justice following the war was undertaken.  The man who selected the men to be killed, SS-Gruppenführer Arthur Nebe, did not survive the war as he was ironically executed as one of the members of the July 20 plot.  Trials were held in 1947 and 1948, at which time the British government called off any future war crime prosecutions.

Stalag Luft III was a big camp and continued on after the event.  It's the camp featured in the recent series Masters of the Air, and it's the camp where a coworker's father had been a prisoner.  The murders of the POWs had a huge chilling effect on escapes, and attempts were much reduced after that.

The escape was massive, although it did not really tie up German resources in any significant way.  It also had the effect of provoking what had long been feared, although only temporarily, which was a Gestapo insertion into the POW system.  Air POWs were held by the Luftwaffe as a point of privilege. 

The event had an outsized lasting impact on the British. The movie based on Brickall's book (which is an excellent book) has become, oddly, a Christmas routine in the United Kingdom. 

The three men who successfully escaped were:

• Per Bergsland, Norwegian pilot of No. 332 Squadron RAF, the 44th escapee.  He remained a pilot after the war, eventually becoming a commercial pilot and an airline executive.
• Jens Müller, Norwegian pilot of No. 331 Squadron RAF, the 43d escapee.  He also remained a pilot and became an airline executive.  His escape took him to Sweden with Bergsland.
• Bram van der Stok, Dutch pilot of No. 41 Squadron RAF, the 18th escapee.  The most decorated pilot in Dutch history, he escaped through the Netherlands down the escape line through Spain and reentered combat before the end of the war.

It's of note that not one of the escapees who managed to get away were British.

It's also worth noting that the famous film fictionalized some elements for the audience.  Luft Stalag III was a massive camp and prior to the escape the Germans had separated American POWs, who had been mixed with the British, from the British.  There were no Americans in the escape at all.

Likewise, while the film correctly shows three men making good their escapes, two onto Sweden and one onto Spain, it condenses the timeline for the event and makes the Dutch pilot an Australian, and one of the Norwegian pilots a Pole.

In Italy, the Germans carried out the reprisal Ardeatine Massacre and killed 335 people in retaliation for a partisan attack in Rome the day prior.

The Germans surrounded the Jewish Greek town of Ioannina, which had been home to Greek Jews for 2,000 years, and marked the houses in the town by the religion of the home's occupants.

200 inmates of the Majdanek concentration camp in Poland were shot.

Mieczysław Wolski and Janusz Wysocki were shot for assisting Jews in Poland.

In Rome, Ivanoe Bonomi resigned as president of the Comitato Centrale di Liberazione Nazionale due to internal problems the organization had amongst its internal factions.  He would return to politics shortly, however.

The Germans prevailed in the Third Narva Offensive.

RAF Flight Sergeant Nicholas Alkemade survived a fall of 18,000 feet without a parachute, his descent from his Lancaster arrested by pine trees and soft snow.  Alkemade had knowingly jumped out of his stricken aircraft without a parachute as his plane was on fire, and the parachute with it.

Fighting continued on Bougainville.

And also in the Admiralities.

R. Lee Ermey, who started his adult career in 1961 as a Marine, and who was medically discharged in 1972, was born in Emporia, Kansas.  He broke into movies while studying in the Philippines on the GI bill, with the role of the drill sergeant in The Boys In Company C, a film which was so close in plot to Full Metal Jacket, save for the fate of the DI, that the second film resulted in a lawsuit.

Last prior edition:

Thursday, March 23, 1944. Defeat at Cassino.

1940s, 1944, Bougainville, German SS, Italian partisans, Italy, Monte Cassino, National Guard, Operation Strangle, Partisans, Personalities, Rome, Vermont National Guard, World War Two

Saturday, December 18, 1943. German terror expands.

T/5 Cletus H. Moert, Louisville, Ky., holds pigeon and while reading message taken from its leg. Pozzilli Sector, Italy. 18 December, 1943.

Heinrich Himmler revoked most exemptions for Jews married to Gentiles in Germany.  Jewish spouses, for the most part, ordered deported to Theresienstadt in January, with exceptions for couples that had very young children or who had lost a child in combat.

The SS murdered 118 men at Drakela, Greece, in a reprisal for partisan activities.

The US 5th Army captured Monte Lungo.  San Pietro is taken by the 36th Infantry Division.

Three officials of the Kharkov Gestapo were tried before a Soviet military Court, found guilty and sentenced to death.  All three, Hans Rietz, Wilhelm Langfeld, and Reinhard Retzlaff would be executed the following day.

The U.S. Army formed a Counter Intelligence Corps unit for the Manhattan Project.

The Japanese destroyer Numakaze was sunk by the US submarine Grayback.

Famous British rocker Keith Richards was born in Kent.

Cpl. Albert Allen of Chicago, Ill., and Cpl. Byron Davis of Lansing, Mich., (15th Weather Squadron), sit down to a meal of "J" rations, December 18, 1943 on New Britain.  Cpl. Davis appears to be wearing jump boots.

Saturday, October 2, 1943. Japan extends conscription to university students.

The Japanese government ended the student deferment for conscription.

I am surprised to learn, frankly, that they had been deferred.

Japan had 45 universities and other additional institutions of higher education at the start of the war, and the number actually expanded during it.  The university system itself only extended back to 1877, to this was quite an expansion over a short period of time.

The Second Battle of Smolensk ended in a victory for the Red Army.

The Soviets gave Romanian POWs the choice of joining a Soviet formed Romanian division or remaining POWs.

Sweden issued a proclamation welcoming Danish refugees.  Sarah Sundin notes on her blog:

Today in World War II History—October 2, 1943: During the night of Oct. 1-2, the Nazis arrest Danish Jews, but most are in hiding, and only 284 are arrested.

The German governor of Poland Hans Frank created a court staffed by the Gestapo, which was authorized to carry out sentences immediately.  

The Australians took Finschafen, New Guinea.

The U.S. 6th Corps took Benevento, Italy.  The British 78th Division crossed the Biferno.  British commandos occupied Termoli.

Friday, September 10, 1943. Betrayal.

Prime Minister Badoglio and King Victor Emanuell III made their way through German lines to escape to Allied held Italy.

Twenty-two Italian ships arrived at Malta.

The Vatican closed the doors of St. Peter's Basilica and blocked the Sant'Anna Gate at noon to give sanctuary to Italians who had fled there.

The Berliner resistance movement the Solf Circle was betrayed by an uncover Gestapo agent, Dr. Paul Reckzeh, following a tea party attended by the group.  Reckzeh was a Swiss physician.  The groups downfall would ultimately lead to the downfall of the Abwehr as the group had connections with it.

Most of the members of the group, although not all of it, would later be executed.  Reckzeh was arrested by he Soviets and held after the war until tried by them in 1950.  He was released in 1952 and lived in East Germany, where he betrayed his daughter Barbara to the East German authorities when she tried to flee to the West. He died in 1996 in Hamburg, having spent most of his adult life in Germany and having had a role in two hideous acts for two hideous regimes.

P-39 Airacobra  at Berry Field, Tennessee, September 10, 1943.

Friday, August 27, 1943. Wunderwaffe, French arrests, the 43d Infantry at Arundel, Red Army at Kotleva and Sevsk, USS Eldridge doesn't disappear.

A German Henschel Hs 293 struck and sank the HMS Egret in the first successful anti shipping guided missile strike in history.

German Wunderwaffe were beginning to come online.

Former French President Albert Lebrun was arrested by the Gestapo, as was André François-Poncet, the former French ambassador to Germany.  Lebrun would survive the war, albeit in ill health, and breifly maintain to DeGaulle that he remained head of state, which DeGaulle ignored and which was legally incorrect in any event.  François-Poncet would as well, and would repreise his pre-war role as ambassador to West Germany.

Insignia of the island hopping 43d Infantry Division. The 43d was a unit made up of mobilized National  Guardsmen from New England.  It was inactivated as a unit in 1963.

Elements of the US 43d Infantry Division landed on the Nauro Peninsula on Arundel in the Solomon's without opposition.

Unless you are exceptionally well versed on the war in the Pacific, you probably are unaware of this action, but it fit into many such forgotten landings by the Army and the Marine Corps during the war.

The Red Army retook Kotleva and Sevsk.

Following up on the US and British example, the Soviet Union and China gave limited recognition to the French Committee of National Liberation.

The USS Eldridge was commissioned. The Eldridge is famous for being part of a 1950s vintage hoax, in which merchant seaman Carl Meredith Allen fairly successfully convinced people that the ship had been made to disappear as part of a dangerous naval experiment during World War Two. There are people who still believe the hoax.

Sunday, August 1, 1943. Operation Tidal Wave, Murder of the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth, Airborne accidents and losses.

Operation Tidal Wave, the low level U.S. Army Air Force bombing of Polesti with B-24s took place.

The raid involved 177 B-24s, of which 54 were lost.  Oil production from Romania, Germany's largest supplier, was temporarily halted but would ultimately be restored.

Germany scored an inscription success with the raid as it was able to decipher Allied radio traffic regarding it and that the planes would fly from Libya.

The Gestapo executed a party of eleven nuns of the Sisters of the Holy Family of Nazareth, a Polish Roman Catholic community, at Navahrudak, Poland, which is now in Belarus.  The Sisters had offered their lives in exchange for those of Polish prisoners, and were executed in defiance of their offer.  They have been declared Blessed by the Catholic Church for their martyrdom.

Japan affected to grant independence to Burma, while in actuality governing it.

Race riots broke out in Harlem due to a white NYPD police officer shooting and wounding Pvt. Robert Bandy during a fight.  Rumors spread that he had been killed, and the riots ensued.  The riots would result in the death of six African American New Yorkers.

William D. Becker, the Mayor of St. Louis, died in a Waco glider accident.  He was a passenger in the military glider, whose wings buckled in flight.

Military gliders of the era were frightenly dangerous, and I can't imagine riding on one voluntarily, let alone as part of a demonstration.  Maj. William B. Robertson, President of the Robertson Aircraft Corporation, which built the gilder, also died in the crash.

Soviet pilot Lydia Litvyak, who had scored eleven areal victories against the Luftwaffe, was shot down and killed in the Battle of Kursk.