Reading the paper on January 4, 1943.
The US Army Air Forces suffered its biggest single-day loss of B-17 Flying Fortress heavy bombers yesterday, with seven failing to return to their base following an air attack on the Nazi U-boat pen at St. Nazaire, in western France.
The thousand-mile-trip had precluded full coverage by escort fighters, who were forced to travel out for just the first part of the mission and accompany the raiders on the last portion of their return.
The aircraft losses occurred over the target area, when the bombers were unprotected.
Soviet troops have recaptured Mozdok, a small city in the Caucasus mountains of southwest Russia which leads to the Grozny oil fields.
Nazi forces had seized the city and other small Caucasus oil fields last Autumn in a failed drive to reach the rich oil fields in Baku, Azerbaijan.
General Douglas MacArthur has announced the near completion of the Allied effort to clear Japanese forces from the Buna Mission area of Papua New Guinea.
[The fighting there would be the first Allied encounter with the fanatical, suicidal fighting style of Japanese troops which would mark the remainder of the Pacific war.]
A Life Magazine photographer’s picture of dead Americans on the Buna beach will become the first image of dead US troops to be shown to the American public during the war.
The Office of War Information had prohibited American publications from printing photographs which showed dead American soldiers.
But President Roosevelt overruled the policy and allowed Life Magazine to publish this photo to counteract public complacency about the war.
The Soviet news agency, Tass, reports that Hitler has approved a ten-year economic plan for occupied France which would require the cessation of all industrial activity in the country’s north.
Under the plan, French agricultural production would be required to increase and French products would be required to fulfill one-third of Germany’s import needs.
Tass also reports that French resistance fighters in Rouen, France, have damaged thirty train locomotives and caused two German trains to collide.
One of the trains was a troop transport and the collision caused many German casualties.
The Swedish press reports that Adolph Hitler’s hair is turning gray.
[He will be 54 in April.]
In perhaps a related development, an economics group within the League of Nations reports that the Nazi offensive in Russia has caused a severe worker shortage in German war industries, despite the use of slave labor, women and the very young and very old.
The Russian campaign has turned the Nazi war effort into a year-round war involving more than half of the German male population between the ages of 18 and 45.
In prior war years, men were available to work in war factories during the slack winter months.
The newspaper’s rationing report for New York City:
Beginning today, Stamp 28 in War Ration Book 1 is good for one pound of coffee through February 7.
War Ration Stamp 10, good for three pounds of sugar, expires January 31.
To obtain War Ration Book 2 for processed vegetables, fruits and soups, meat and other items that will be rationed soon, you must produce Book 1 on a date to be announced later.
If you do not have Book 1, apply to local rationing board before January 15.
And finally…
When engine trouble forced Air Force pilot George Humbrecht to land his plane in the North African desert, he quickly found himself surrounded by a large group of native Arabs.
And it was awkward.
Everyone stood and looked at each other.
Then one man stepped forward and said, “New York?”
And George, a St. Louis native, nevertheless replied, “Yes.”
That broke the ice and, before long, George found himself the guest of honor at a feast of meats, vegetables, sweets, and coffee, all prepared in the native style.
‘And on my right hand was a servant pouring me white wine and on my left was a servant with red,’ he said.
The men then helped George get back to his unit in Tunis, making him one of the multitudes across the globe whose life was miraculously spared in the war by the milk of human kindness.1
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I’ll see you on Monday.
— Brenda
Stay warm!
The phrase ‘milk of human kindness’ comes from Lady MacBeth’s speech in Act 1, Scene 5, of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth,” 1606.
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