Reading the paper on Oct. 26, 1942.
In intense fighting in El Alamein, Egypt, yesterday, British ground forces, supported by Allied aircraft, broke through gaps in Field Marshall Erwin Rommel’s defensive ‘steel wall’ of dense mine fields, concealed artillery and machine gun nests, and anti-tank obstacles, clearing a path for British tanks which, until now, had been held in reserve.
Among the Allied forces at El Alamein are troops from Britain’s 51st Highland Division, whose fighters, famous for their bayonet tactics, blasted through the outer German defensive line while accompanied by kilted pipers.
Clear, sunny weather has intensified the ongoing house-to-house fighting between freshly reinforced German forces and the Red Army defenders in northern Stalingrad.
Tribute has been paid to Soviet railroad workers who have kept supply lines open to the city at great personal cost, despite heavy German aerial bombardment.
The Japanese have managed to land tanks on Guadalcanal, which they have used, in combination with Japanese aircraft, to attack US positions at the Guadalcanal airfield.
Additional Japanese ground troops have also arrived on Guadalcanal and a large Japanese naval force is headed to the island.
Crewmen of a B-17 Flying Fortress have been awarded the Silver Star for “gallantry of the highest order” after their aircraft was attacked by twenty-three Japanese Zeros while making a bombing run over Burma recently.
Despite receiving heavy damage, the B-17 crew managed to bomb its target and shoot down four enemy aircraft.
Most of the B-17’s crew then bailed out, but the pilot and co-pilot stayed with the plane and guided it to a controlled crash-landing.
They survived the crash and then walked seventy-four miles to the safety of a British-controlled village.
The War Department has revealed the escape from the Philippines’ Corregidor Island of eighteen crewmen of the USS Quail following the US surrender of the Philippine Islands in May.
Traveling in a thirty-six-foot motor launch with only a watch, a compass a homemade sextant and a few maps, the men sailed two thousand miles through Japanese-controlled waters, reaching Australia in thirty-one days.
The War Department announced the names of seven men who are missing, along with World War I flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker, in the Pacific.
Rickenbacker’s B-17 aircraft left Hawaii on October 21 bound for Canton Island on an inspection tour of US installations in the Pacific theater, but is feared lost.
A search is underway using all available US Navy and Army assets.
[This story has a happy ending. On November 13, a Navy search plane will find the B-17’s pilot floating on a raft. Two days later, Rickenbacker and the rest of the men will be found on rafts in the same area. Rickenbacker, then age fifty-two, will spend two weeks recovering in a hospital, then complete his Pacific tour.]
The FBI ‘rounded up’ fifty-two Japanese in the Houston-Galveston area yesterday in the largest arrest of Japanese-Americans outside of the US West Coast.
First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who is on a tour of England, reports that US troops stationed there want more mail, warmer socks, and better weather.
When soldiers asked Mrs. Roosevelt what she carried in her shoulder bag, she replied ‘a lipstick, powder, cigarettes and matches, just like any other woman, and some necessary papers.’
Mrs. Roosevelt has been a dinner guest of the King and Queen and will be a houseguest of Prime Minister Churchill in the coming days.
And finally…
Public notices printed in the New York Times:
“My wife, Dorothy, left me in February 1940. I am no longer responsible for her debts.” Thomas Dooley, Stamford, Connecticut
“WOMAN — Help [another] WOMAN drive [to] Florida [in] exchange [for] transportation. references [to be] exchanged.
“All those in favor of giving the obsolete 3rd Ave. ‘El’ to the Japs in [the form of] bullets, guns, tanks, say YES. Write [to the] borough president Edgar Nathan [at the] Municipal Building.”
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I’ll see you on Monday.
— Brenda
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