October 4, 1942 – NBC News Of The World – Gordon Skene Sound Collection –
October 4, 1942 – News from the Battlefronts this day. From the Solomon Islands, reports of Allied air strikes and surprise dawn raids on Japanese ships and installations. Torpedo planes launched a close-range attack on a flotilla of Japanese ships, hitting three light Cruisers and two merchant vessels. From Burma, more news of surprise raids from the air, hitting several supply depots and destroying bridges. On the ground, Allied troops were still making advances with little in the way of resistance.
Meanwhile, word from the besieged city of Stalingrad that there was no letup in the inhuman pace of battle and that German losses kept mounting as Red Army troops continued their advance from the north of the city. Even with throwing any and all replacements in, it wasn’t keeping pace with the staggering number of losses the German Army was encountering. Hard fought objectives were changing hands during the battle, as much as ten times in less than a month. It was clear the Red Army was settling in for a long siege. Prior to the German advance on Stalingrad, the slogan was “Every home a fortress”. It was eventually becoming “Every Fortress a home” as requests for books, record players and writing supplies were being relayed from the front.
And back home – from Washington, word was out that a stepped-up program for recruiting 18-19 year olds was coming with added incentives, including a crying need for MP’s (Military Police). Seems the MP’s were getting a bad rep going back to the days of 1917, but the War Department was doing its best to change that perception in the hopes of getting younger recruits interested in jobs not involving the battle front.
And that’s just a small slice of what was going on, this October 4, 1942 from NBC Radio’s News Of The World.
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