Wednesday, April 5, 1944. I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people, even those I’ve never met. I want to go on living even after my death! And that’s why I’m so grateful to God for having given me this gift, which I can use to develop myself and to express all that’s inside me! When I write I can shake off all my cares. My sorrow disappears, my spirits are revived!

 

Anne Frank.

I finally realized that I must do my schoolwork to keep from being ignorant, to get on in life, to become a journalist, because that’s what I want! I know I can write, […] but it remains to be seen whether I really have talent. And if I don’t have the talent to write books or newspaper articles, I can always write for myself. But I want to achieve more than that. I can’t imagine living like Mother, Mrs. van Daan and all the women who go about their work and are then forgotten. I need to have something besides a husband and children to devote myself to! […] I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people, even those I’ve never met. I want to go on living even after my death! And that’s why I’m so grateful to God for having given me this gift, which I can use to develop myself and to express all that’s inside me! When I write I can shake off all my cares. My sorrow disappears, my spirits are revived! But, and that’s a big question, will I ever be able to write something great, will I ever become a journalist or a writer?

The Diary of Anne Frank, April 5, 1944.

She achieved her goal, and triumphed over her oppressors.

Yitgadal v’yitkadash sh’mei raba b’alma di v’ra chir’utei; v’yamlich malchutei b’hayeichon u-v’yomeichon, uv’hayei d’chol beit yisrael, ba-agala u-vi-z’man kariv, v’imru amen.

Y’hei sh’mei raba m’varach l’alam u-l’almei almaya.

Yitbarach v’yishtabah, v’yitpa’ar v’yitromam, v’yitnasei v’yit-hadar, v’yit’aleh v’yit’halal sh’mei d’kudsha, b’rich hu, l’ela min kol birchata v’shirata, tushb’hata v’nehemata, da-amiran b’alma, v’imru amen.

Y’hei sh’lama raba min sh’maya, v’hayim, aleinu v’al koi yisrael, v’imru amen.

Oseh shalom bi-m’romav, hu ya’aseh shalom aleinu v’al kol yisrael, v’imru amen.

Magnified and sanctified is the great name of God throughout the world, which was created according to Divine will. May the rule of peace be established speedily in our time, unto us and unto the entire household of Israel. And let us say: Amen.

May God’s great name be praised throughout all eternity. Glorified and celebrated, lauded and praised, acclaimed and honored, extolled and exalted ever be the name of thy Holy One, far beyond all song and psalm, beyond all hymns of glory which mortals can offer. And let us say: Amen.

May there be abundant peace from heaven, with life’s goodness for us and for all thy people Israel. And let us say: Amen.

May the One who brings peace to the universe bring peace to us and to all the people Israel. And let us say: Amen.

And; 

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them. May their souls and all the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.

Amen.

On the same day, Hungarian authorities, now leaning into Nazism as it collapsed, ordered Hungarian Jews to wear a yellow Star of David.

The Marines occupied Utirik Atoll in the Marshalls, another of the numerous islands taken and occupied which we have forgotten.

A soldier who has been a long time in the line does have a 'look' in his eyes that anyone with practice can discern. It's a look of dullness, eyes that look without seeing, eyes that see without transferring any response to the mind. It's a look that is the display room for the thoughts that lie behind it---------¬exhaustion, lack of sleep, tension for too long, weariness that is too great, fear beyond fear, misery to the point of numbness, a look of surpassing indifference to anything anybody can do to you. It's a look I dread to see on men. 

Ernie Pyle, April 5, 1944.

The Red Army cut the rail line from Odessa at Rozdilna.

Ploesti, Romania, is attacked by B-17s and B-24s.  Only 12 bombers are lost in spite of heavy German, Romanian and Bulgarian fighter opposition and flak.

Wendell Willkie, a democratic until 1939, withdrew from the 1944 GOP Presidential contest.

Last prior edition:

Holy Tuesday, April 4, 1944. Battle of Kohima commences, German counteroffensive, Photographing Auschwitz by accident, Bombing Bucharest, Italo-Yugoslav partisands, Charlie Chaplin not guilty.1920s, 1924, 2020, 2020s, 2024, Animals, baseball, Crime, Prohibition, The Roaring Twenties, Wolves

Blog Mirror: Black Women in the Wartime Struggle

 

Black Women in the Wartime Struggle

Holy Tuesday, April 4, 1944. Battle of Kohima commences, German counteroffensive, Photographing Auschwitz by accident, Bombing Bucharest, Italo-Yugoslav partisands, Charlie Chaplin not guilty.

The Battle of Kohima began around the town of Kohima in British India. The battle would prove to be the turning point in U-Go, and also prove to be long-running.

Japanese forces were depending on taking the town in order to resupply their provisions.  In their initial attacks they cut off all access to the town.

A German counterattack by the 4th Panzer Army retook Kovel, a city in pre-war Poland, which is now in Ukraine.   The attack blocked the Soviets from gaining a pass through the Carpathians.

The city had a large Jewish population before World War Two, and in fact had a large Ukrainian population that were members of the Communist Party. The Soviet invasion in 1939 had accordingly been largely welcomed.  The German invasion would, of course, prove tragic, with 18,000 Jewish residents of the city being murdered.  The city became a refuge for Poles escaping Ukrainian partisans late in the war.  After the war, the Polish population of the city was forcibly relocated to post-war Poland.

A de Havilland Mosquito from the SAAF 60 Photo-Recon Squadron, flying out of Foggia, Italy to photograph the IG Farben photographed Auschwitz as part of a filming overrun, the latter of which was a practice in photo recon missions.  It was the first instance of Auschwitz being photographed by the Allies from the air.

Six Valentine DD tanks sank in Exercise Smash I with the loss of their crews.

Forty-nine Axis aircraft were lost contesting an Allied raid, launched from forces in the Mediterranean, on Bucharest's marshalling yards.  Twelve to Twenty Allied aircraft were lost.  2,942 civilians were killed.

African Ameican soldiers Sgt. John C. Clark, Lorman, Miss., and S/Sgt. Ford M. Shaw, Tuscon, Arizona., members of the members of Co. E, 25th Combat Team, 93rd Div. (colored)  clean their rifles.  Bougainville, April 4, 1944.

Charles de Gaulle announced changes to the Committee of National Liberation in Algiers, including the appointment of two Communists.

In France, the resistance halts aircraft parts production at Bronzavaia.

The First Partisan battalion Pino Budicin in Yugoslavia, made up of Italian Communists was formed.

The Work Truck Blog: Caterpillar Crew.:  

Caterpillar Crew.

 

"When the "caterpillar" crew go out to clear road of snow, they live right on the spot. T/5 Floyd R. Worendorff, Vendrick, Idaho, relaxes in his house on wheels. Truck is fitted with bunks and stove, and supplies living quarters for six men. 4 April, 1944. Camilatella, Italy."

Note the stove in the truck.  I haven't experienced that.

Scary thing is, I've done the same thing, over 40 years later.

Charlie Chaplin was acquitted of violating the Mann Act.

The suit was somewhat ironic in that it stemmed from Joan Barry's pregnancy. While FBI files suggest that Barry aborted two children during her affair with Chaplin, which did occur, this child was not Chaplin's, as blood tests proved.  Chaplin, in a separate suit, would nonetheless be ordered to pay child support for the girl until age 21.

Moreover, Barry was 21 years old with her affair with 52-year-old Chaplin began.  Chaplin definitely fished in the shallower end of the pond, but Barry was of age, which at least one of his prior conquests, whom he married, was not.

Barry was sliding towards insanity, and after her affair with Chaplin ended, stocked him.  She'd end up being committed to a mental institution at age 33, by which time she had married and had two additional children.

Chaplin married Oona O'Neill in 1943, at which time the affair with Barry was over.  O'Neill, who would be his last spouse, was 18 years old at the time.

Related Threads:

November 29

Countdown on the Great War, November 10, 1918: A Socialist Provisional Government forms in Germany, the Naval War continues on, and Mildred Harris weds.

Wednesday, June 16, 1943. Noor Inayat Khan inserted in France.

Last prior edition.

Holy Monday, April 3, 1944. Attack on the Tirpitz, Racist law in Texas struck down, Budapest hit, The death of Evelyn Sharp, Charles Lindbergh buys a New Testament.

1940s, 1944, Aircraft, boats and ships, Bougainville, Court, Mohandas Gandi, Operation Tungsten, Personalities, Racism, Royal Navy, Sex, The relationship between men and women, Women Airforce Service Pilots

Saturday, April 1, 1944. The closing curtain for the Axis.

Today in World War II History—April 1, 1944: Countdown to D-day: Adm. Sir Bertram Ramsay (Allied Naval Commander, Expeditionary Force) takes operational control of US naval forces for D-day.

Sarah Sundin's blog. 

There's so much good stuff on her blog today, that I thought about just not posting anything else here.  She notes, in addition to the above:

1.  The Allied Combined Bomber Offensive officially ended due to achieving air superiority over Europe.

2.  The US Fifteenth Air Force began operations to evacuate Yugoslavian partisans, women, and children.

On other topics, Task Force 58 attacked Woleai islands in an ongoing devastating aerial assault in the Caroline's.

In the Admiralities, the US occupied Ndrilo and Koniniat.

Roosevelt spoke on Victory Gardens:

I hope every American who possibly can will grow a victory garden this year. We found out last year that even the small gardens helped.

The total harvest from victory gardens was tremendous. It made the difference between scarcity and abundance. The Department of Agriculture surveys show that 42 percent of the fresh vegetables consumed in 1943 came from victory gardens. This should clearly emphasize the far-reaching importance of the victory garden program.

Because of the greatly increased demands in 1944, we will need all the food we can grow. Food still remains a first essential to winning the war. Victory gardens are of direct benefit in helping relieve manpower, transportation, and living costs as well as the food problem. Increased food requirements for our armed  (cut off at this point)

Patton spoke to US Troops in Northern Ireland.

 

Last prior edition:

Friday, March 31, 1944. Japanese command disaster.

Friday, March 31, 1944. Japanese command disaster.

Commander in Chief of the Japanese Combined Fleets, Admiral Mineichi Koga (古賀 峯一) was killed when his plane, a Kawanishi H8K ("Emily") flying boat, crashed during a typhoon between Palau and Davao while he was overseeing the withdrawal of the Combined Fleet from its Palau headquarters.  His second in command, Vice Admiral Shigeru Fukudome (福留 繁) went down in a separate plain off of off Cebu and captured by Filipino guerrillas.  As a result of that, Koga's battle plans associated with Palau and the defense of the Marianas, Operation Z, were captured by the Allies.

Fukodome, left, Koga, right.  1944.

Koga's death was kept secret until May, due to difficulties agreeing to a successor.

Fukudome survived the war, although he was tried for war crimes and found negligent association with the killing of two American airmen in Singapore. He was generally cooperative with the Allies after the war.  His prison sentence was brief, and he was an advisor to the Japanese government on the establishment of the Japanese Self Defense Force.  He died in 1971 at the age of 80.

Operation Desecrate One concluded.

The Red Army took Ochakov.

Generaloberst Georg Lindemann took command of German Army Group North, which had been commanded by Model.

Operation Ukrainian Committee was carried out by the Polish Home Army.  It saw the elimination of the small collaborationist Ukrainian Central Committee, which was active in recruiting Ukrainians for the SS Galicia unit.

The Central Committee was headed by a Ukrainian military refugee who had lived in Poland since 1923.  In a way, this shows the complicated nature of the war in the East, and of the post-war East, the "Bloodlands", in general.  Poland had claimed large chunks of Ukraine after World War One, and while it didn't keep all that it claimed in Ukraine and Belarus, it kept a lot of it.  Ukraine and Poland fought a war immediately after World War One over the issue.  Ukraine and Poland's struggle against each other, however, would soon be consumed by their mutual struggle with the Soviet Union, which would result in Poland being absorbed into the Communist state, but Poland avoiding it.  Poland then became a place of refuge for Ukrainians struggling against the USSR.

With the German and Soviet invasion of Poland in 1940, Poland was put in a desperate situation and ceased to exist, according to their enemies.  The Polish civilian death rate was the highest in Europe during the war, with regular Poles subject to German murders.  Ukrainians had suffered massively from the USSR's genocidal policies aimed at it in the 1920s and 1930s, and accordingly many Ukrainians aw the Germans as liberators.  The Germans saw no future for an independent Ukraine, but Ukrainian organizations sprang up under the belief that the Germans would grant them the same, with Ukrainian partisan movements also developing, some of which supported the USSR, and some of which opposed the USSR and the Germans, as well as the Poles on Ukrainian territory, the latter being a revival, more or less, of the Russo Ukrainian War in a weird way.

All of this continues to have overtones to the present day, with the Poles supporting democratic Ukraine in its war against Russia, but not really having forgotten the earlier Polish Ukrainian bloodletting.  Russian claims that Ukrainians are Nazis, which they are not, recalls the earlier pro Nazi movements in wartime Ukraine, not all of which have really been disavowed by modern Ukrainians.

The Disney short Donald Duck and the Gorilla was released.

Last prior edition:

Thursday, March 30, 1944. Operation Desecrate One

1940s, 1944, Adolf Hitler, boats and ships, Catholic Legion of Decency, Disease, German Army, Imperial Japanese Navy, Operation Desecrate One, Palau, Personalities, Red Army, U.S. Navy, Von Manstein, World War Two

Thursday, March 30, 1944. Operation Desecrate One

 The US Navy launched Operation Desecrate One, an airborne assault on and around Palau.

The action was in preparation for the invasion of Western New Guinea and saw the  USS Enterprise (CV-6), USS Bunker Hill (CV-17), USS Hornet (CV-12), USS Yorktown (CV-10), USS Lexington (CV-16), USS Monterey (CVL-26), USS Belleau Wood (CVL-24), USS Cowpens (CVL-25), USS Cabot (CVL-28), USS Princeton (CVL-23), and USS Langley (CVL-27)  in action.

Thirty-six Japanese ships were sunk or damaged in the attacks.  Navy aircraft liad minefields by air for the first time in World War Two.

US forces occupy Pityilu Island.

96 of 795 RAF bombers were shot down in an ineffective raid of Nuremberg, the worst bomber command loss of the war.

Hitler replaced Erich von Manstein and Paul Ludwig Ewald von Kleist with Walter Model and Ferdinand Schörner in a command shake up.

Von Manstein was a difficult commander for Hitler, and was sometimes insubordinate.  Often regarded as one of the best German generals of the war, he tried to distance himself post-war from the Nazis, but it can't really be done.  Oddly enough, Hitler recognized his abilities at the time of reliving him, awarding him the Swords of the Knight's Cross at the same time.  Upon being relieved Hitler actually acknowledged his abilities but said he couldn't use him, to which Von Manstein replied:

My Führer ... please believe me when I say I will use all strategic means at my disposal to defend the soil in which my son lies buried.

The reference was to his son, who had died on the Russian Front. As earlier noted, Von Manstein was buried with full military honors at the time of his death in 1973 in spite of being a war criminal.  He was 85 at the time of his death.

While I've probably mentioned it before, an oddity of his biography is that his father was German general Eduard von Lewinski and his mother his spouse, Helene Pauline von Sperling.  He was given to his aunt and uncle, General Georg von Manstein and Hedwig von Sperling, sister to Helene, upon birth, as they were childless, which is flat out weird.  You can't psychoanalyze the dead, but I wonder if that act of betrayal caused his dog like loyalty to Hitler.

Like Von Manstein, Von Kleist would also not return to service.  Unlike Von Manstein, however, he was turned over to the Soviets after the war and died in 1954 in prison in the Soviet Union at the age of 73.

The Red Army took Chemovtsky.

Sophia Bulgaria endured its heaviest bombing, by the U.S. Army Air Force, of the war.

The U-223 sank the HMS Laforey.  The U-223 was in turn sunk by British destroyers.

The U.S. Public Health Service released To The People of the United States, a short film about a pilot who contracts syphilis.  The film won an Academy Award for documentary short, but drew the ire of the Catholic Legion of Decency for failing to stress the immoral conduct giving rise to the disease.

Last prior edition:

Wednesday, March 29, 1944 Cutting off Imphal.

1940s, 1944, boats and ships, Columbian Navy, Eastern Front, Imperial Japanese Navy, India, Lithuanian Air Force, Operation U-Go, Red Army, The Great Escape, World War Two

Wednesday, March 29, 1944 Cutting off Imphal.

The Japanese 31st (Sato) Division cut the road between Imphal and Kohima.  Gen. Slim, British 14th Army, decides to supply Imphal by air.

The Red Army took Kolomya, which was in Poland prior to 1939, but which is now in Ukraine.

The Royal Navy sank the U-961.

Lithuanian pilot Romualdas Marcinkus, part of the Great Escape, was executed by the Gestapo.

The Columbian Navy destroyer ARC Caldas engaged and damaged the U-154 while escorting the MC Cabimas.

Task Force 31.6 off New Ireland to Emirau Island in the Bismark Arch. Photographed by a plane from USS Manila Bay (CVE-61), March 29, 1944.

The first award of the Expert Infantryman Badge was made.

Last prior edition:

Tuesday, March 28, 1944. Another day in the war.

1940s, 1944, Aircraft, Army, basketball, boats and ships, Bracero Program, Burma, China Burma India Theater, Eastern Front, Ethnicities, Italy, Operation U-Go, Passover, Sports, U.S. Navy, Women, World War Two

Tuesday, March 28, 1944. Another day in the war.

Jewish Welfare Board Seder at Muskogee, Oklahoma, March 28, 1944.

Mexican National Mercy Martinez harvesting carrots in the field in El Centro, Imperial County, California on March 28, 1944.

The British Parliament voted to give female teachers the same pay as men.

The Italian Communist Party declared cooperation with "bourgeois" parties.

The Red Army took Nikolaev.

Fighting carried on in the CBI.

"Infantrymen of the 66th Regt, 2nd Bn, 22nd Chinese Division advancing upon a group of tanks upon which a Jap Magnetic anti tank mine has been set off by remote control ordnance Intelligence purposes.

These tanks had burnt out. They belong to the First Provisional Tank Group and maintenance men of that outfit will salvage the salvageable parts left on these tanks. They met action against the Japs in the area a few miles north of the village of Shadeazup, Northern Burma. This photo demonstrated though, how the Chinese troops had actually fought with the tank group. This tank group is an American trained Chinese outfit, they having received their training at Ramgarh, India from U.S. Army Armoured Corps instructors. These infantrymen are also American trained. 28 March, 1944."

Ships were inspected:

USS Cleveland (CL-55) during a Captain's inspection, March 28, 1944.

Combat runs were made.

Corsairs on a mission over the Solomons.

Stricken B-17 "Whodat/The Dingbat" of the 381st Bomb Group in flight over Reims, France, 28 March 1944. Just hit, she was dropping out of formation with three dead on board.

B-17 going down over France, March 28, 1944.

Training was ongoing.

M4 Shermans at Camp San Luis Obispo, California, March 28, 1944.

Field Mess, Camp Cooke, California, March 28, 1944.

Tank crews with M4 Shermans, Camp Cooke, California, March 28, 1944.

The final game of the 1944 NCAA Men's Division Tournament saw Utah beat Dartmouth.

Commander Richard Wainwright, Jr., winner of the Medal of Honor for action at Vera Cruz in 1914, and recalled to service after having been medically retired in 1921, died in service at Annapolis at age 61.  His Medal of Honor citation reads:

For distinguished conduct in battle, engagements of Vera Cruz, 21 and 22 April 1914. Lt. Wainwright was eminent and conspicuous in command of his battalion; was in the fighting of both days, and exhibited courage and skill in leading his men through action. In seizing the customhouse, he encountered for many hours the heaviest and most pernicious concealed fire of the entire day, but his courage and coolness under trying conditions were marked.

Last prior edition:

Monday, March 27, 1944. Knock Out Dropper.

Monday, March 27, 1944. Knock Out Dropper.

 

The B-17 "Knock Out Dropper" flew its 75th mission, the first American bomber to reach that mark.  It would have had multiple crews in reaching that goal.

Negotiations between the USSR and Finland resumed.

The Marine Corps completed its unopposed landings on Emirau.

The Red Army captured Kamenets-Podolski, on the Dnestr River and Gorodenka.  The German 1st Panzer Army is ordered to break out.

The British regroup in India, with reinforcements brought in by air.

Life magazine, which was heavy on photos, featured a Landing Ship, Infantry, on the cover.  In the pages it had an article on the best techniques for pin-ups.

Last prior edition:

Sunday, March 26, 1944. Unaddressed lynching and The Road To Victory.

Saturday, March 25, 1944. Ioannina.

Young woman weeps during the deportation of Jews from Ioannina, Greece - March 25, 1944. Budesarchive on Wikipedia.  87% of Greek Jews perished in the Holocaust.  91% of those from Ioannina, the oldest and ancient Greek Jewish settlement, would die at Auschwitz.

Adolf Hitler ordered the execution of recaptured POWS who were part of the mass escape from Stalag Luft III.  While his order would mostly be carried out, it would not entirely. 

Germany was, of course, inescapably going down in defeat. As it was, it was covering itself in gore.

The Battle of the Kaments-Podolsky Pocket began as the Red Army attempted to surround the 1st Panzer Army South at Tarnopol.

U.S. forces eliminate most of the remaining Japanese forces on Manus.

In the Caroline Islands, Japanese patrols sight large American naval forces heading for Palau.

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

Thursday, March 23, 1944. Defeat at Cassino.

Offensive operations at Monte Cassino by the Allies were halted, and Allied troops withdrew to defensive lines.

In Rome, a bomb planted by Italian partisans killed 33 members of the SS.

In the skies above Italy, the Allies commenced Operation Strangle, an air offensive designed to cut German supplies to the Italian front.

A Japanese attack on Bougainville resulted in heavy Japanese losses.

The US bombarded the Japanese seaplane base on Elouae in the St. Matthias Islands.

Major General Leonard F. Wing, Commanding General, 43rd Division. South Pacific Area. 23 March, 1944.  Wing was unusual in that he was a division commander who was a Vermont National Guardsman, something Army prejudice generally prevented from occurring.  He was a lawyer in civilian life.  Wing is only 50 years old in this photograph.  He died just after World War Two at age 52, another senior figure whose life was seemingly cut short by the stress of command.

Richard Theodore Otcasek (March 23, 1944 – September 15, 2019), known as Ric Ocasek, was born in Baltimore.  He is best recalled as the vocalist for The Cars.

Last prior edition:

Wednesday, March 22, 1944. German defeat in the Battle of the Atlantic.

1940s, 1944, Aircraft, Battle of the Atlantic, Bougainville, Clothing, Geology, German Kriegsmarine, Italian Army, Monte Cassino, New Zealand Army, Rationing, The Holocaust, Theresienstadt, World War Two