Friday, May 25, 2012

Running Away



These are Germans evacuating Rome. Before any Allied troops entered the capital city, and Italian took these pictures of the withdrawing Germans from the upper story window of the house were he had concealed himself. Later he gave them to YANKs Sgt. George Aarons, who reached Rome with the first Allied patrols.

Captured



These German paratroopers are young and have not fought long. Now they are prisoners, captured after fierce action outside Velletri, below Rome.

YANK 7 July 1944

Ride of His Life

German sniper has grandstand seat in a jeep procession in France. Vehicle mounts two machine guns, one .50 caliber and one. 30 light.

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Rangers Climb into Hell

Rangers climbed up this rope ladder to surprise and silence a Jerry gun crew at the cliff's top. 
Part of D-Day operations.

YANK 7 July 1944

Cover 7 July 1944

When in Rome, hold a Roman baby and be popular with the populace, says Pvt. Ben Pollack who was among the first American soldiers to enter the former Axis capital.  YANK's Sgt. George Aarons photographed Pvt. Pollack standing on a motorcycle surrounded by a happy, well-dressed crowd.

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Scoreboard

Pvt. James O'Banner of Memphis Tennessee, first Negro infantryman to kill a Jap, notches his carbine. He scored the kill on a patrol at Bougainville where the 93rd division saw its first action.
Photo by Sgt. Dillon Ferris

Friday, August 28, 2009

Picnic at Sansapor

It wasn't all war and destruction. Sometimes it was just a picnic. The GIs were ready to fight but no one came out to fight.

Read Sgt. Charles Pearson's story of the Picnic at Sansapor.

Read the full article HERE

YANK 25 Aug 1944

Battle Score

Tadji, New Guinea

Three Nips killed and one GI shirt lost was S/Sgt. Gordon Clapshaw's battle score.

YANK 25 Aug 1944 Down Under Edition

The Morning After

Tadji, New Guinea

The morning after they had mowed down a whole column of Japs, S/Sgt. John B. Dicken, Pvt. Paul E. Troutman and Pfc. Joe A. Angel take a cautious look around their foxhole.

YANK 25 Aug 1944 Down Under Edition

It's Hotter'n Hell at Andimeshk

Read Sgt. Burtt Evans amusing tale of putting up with the heat for our GIs serving in Iran. Yes I said Iran.

Read the full Article HERE

YANK 25 Aug 1944

Persistent Moser

Australia

2nd Lt. Ernest Moser of Sagiknaw, Mich., is a persistent guy, which is an understatement if you ever saw one. Moser joined the Army twice and applied 8 times to become a pilot in the Army. Even then, with his ten years of flying experience in civilian life, it took two Generals, Kenny and Arnold to push through waivers to get the job done. For a while he was the only flying T/Sgt. rated as a service pilot.

YANK 25 Aug 1944 Down Under Edition

Marie McDonald

Marie McDonald was the Pin-up Girl for YANK for 25 Aug 1944.

Marie appeared in about 24 Hollywood productions. Her nickname for a while was "the body."
Unfortunately she died of an overdose in 1965 at the age of 42. She was about 21 when this picture was taken.

YANK 25 Aug 1944

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Sgt. Pete Paris

Sgt. Pete Paris the first enlisted man to report for duty on the editorial staff of YANK when it was activated in 1942, was killed in action June 6 on the Normandy beachhead while he was covering the D-Day landings of the 1st Division for this magazine.

Pete was an illistrator and photographer. He took some award winning photos during the African campain.

Pete Paris was 30 years old.

YANK 25 Aug 1944

The Battle of Belvedere

Read the action packed story by Sgt. James P. O'Neill about the 100th and 442nd fight one day in Italy. These are our proud "most decorated" Japanese-American soldiers who gave there all in WWII.

Read the full story of "The Battle of Belvedere" HERE

YANK 25 Aug 1944

YANK Cover 27 Aug 1944 British Edition

"KAMERAD!" The jig is up for this Nazi officer, and a couple of MPs intend to see it stays that way.

YANK 27 Aug 1944 British Edition

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Sad Sack "Information"


YANK 25 Aug 1944

Rookie Veteran

Lois Konantz of St. Paul, Minn., joins the WAC in London as a Pfc. Reason: she transferred from the Women's Auxiliary Air Force of the RAF where she'd been serving for almost three years.

YANK 25 Aug 1944

BAR man in Italy

Pfc. Nakana cleaning his favorite weapon, a BAR.

YANK 25 Aug 1944

Buffalo blasts away

A buffalo goes into action on the beach at Numfor. The crew directs fire on Jap defenders who have dug themselves into the blasted rubble beyond the beach.

YANK 25 Aug 1944

Pvt. Henry (Slim) Nakamora

Pvt. Henry (Slim) Nakamora smiles happily as he rests his hands on his hard-working bazooka. With this bazooka, operating the two-man weapon by himself, Slim was able to knock out a German Pz Kw IV tank.

YANK 25 Aug 1944

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

There will be a ......

Listen to Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters sing "Hot Time"

when those YANKs go marching in



Get a playlist! Standalone player Get Ringtones

Taking off with the Tanks

Read this great eye witness report from Sgt. Walter Peters when he went out with the tanks, on road against the Germans in France.

Read the full article HERE

YANK 20 Aug 1944 British Edition

Cover 25 Aug 1944

The man at rest is Cpl. Thomas O'Neal, 2nd Marine Division. He is sitting in front of his M4 tank in the town of Garapan on the island of Saipan after the Japs had been wiped out. Tin roofs and signs provide some makeshift camouflage for the tank.

Photo by YANK photographer Sgt. Bill Young.

YANK 25 Aug 1944

Cover 25 Aug 1944 Down Under Edition

The well worn, expressive GI shoes were painted by Sgt. George E. Porter Jr., who is with the 5th Photographic Technical Squadron in New Guinea. Sgt. Porter spent six pre-induction years in New York City doing commercial art work with one of the larger advertising agencies. In addition to this, his paintings in the field of fine arts have been exhibited in the 57th Street Galleries in New York and in Florida. The sergeant didn't say whether his own (or somebody else's) brogans served as the models for this painting.

YANK 25 Aug 1944 Down Under Edition

Update on David Green

The following was a comment left by a relative:

David had 12 children, now there are 88 offspring! All in Westminster, Maryland. My grandmother gave me one of these photos. People all over the country sent them to "Parents of CPL. David Green", Westminster, MD.

See more of them on www.ww2dday.com

Thanks for these wonderful comments and updates -- YANK

Monday, August 24, 2009

GI Washing Machine

Flyers working out of African desert airfields improvise a wash tub by lighting a fire under a British petrol tin so they can do their laundry.

YANK 20 Aug 1944 British Edition

Golly What Gams!

Radio City Music Hall Rockettes with plaque made for them from bits of a South Pacific flyers who've picked theses gals as "ideal."

YANK 20 Aug 1944 British Edition

Friday, August 21, 2009

German Bazooka

Sgt. R. D. Shelton, of New Castle, PA., demonstrates the German version of a bazooka, which he found in a slit trench. It's larger than ours, he tells the other three GIs, but not quite as effective.

YANK 20 Aug 1944 British Edition

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Global Outlook

Read Sgt. Samuel W. Taylor's amusing little article about Mud, Booze. and Babes.

Read the full article HERE

YANK 20 Aug 1944 British Edition

Cartoon

"Anything new on my transfer, sir?"

Cartoon by Pvt. Tom Flannery

After the war, Thomas Flannery worked as a free-lance cartoonist in New York, where his work regularly appeared in the Saturday Evening Post, Redbook, Look, Colliers, Good Housekeeping and Cosmopolitan.

In 1948 he joined the staff of the Lowell (Massachusetts) Sun where he served as a cartoonist for nine years. He moved to Baltimore and became the first editorial cartoonist for The Evening Sun in 1957. He was the cartoonist for the Baltimore Sun from 1972 until his retirement in 1988.

During his 31-year career, it is estimated that Thomas produced some 7,200 drawings for The Evening Sun and The Sun, many of which were subsequently deposited at the Johns Hopkins University's Eisenhower Library.

Tom died in 1999. Well done Tom.


YANK 20 Aug 1944 British Edition

The Road Back

The road back--and forward. It's all over now for these dejected heinie PWs, but for the Yanks on the right there's a long way ahead just around that turn.

YANK 20 Aug 1944 British Edition

Deadstock

"Lying all over the orchards and the roads between them were dead cows and horses--so many that you no longer paid much attention to them."

An account from the upcoming article "Taking off with the Tanks."

YANK 20 Aug 1944 British Edition

YANK Cover 20 Aug 1944 British Edition


Fight's finish...for two groups of men. Casualties are brought aboard an LST on the French coast while in the background, a file of Nazi prisoners plods further from the Fatherland.

YANK 20 Aug 1944 British Edition

Pvt. Pitts

Second Air Force, Colorado Springs, Colo.

Leota Lane Pitts, of the famed Lane Sisters, has joined the WACs. The tinsel life of Hollywood and the stage is well behind her now. She still sings like an angel but admits she can't do a single push up.

YANK 18 Aug 1944

Weapons Wizard

M/Sgt. John (Jazz) Magoni of Fort Benning, Ga., recently coped the Legion of Merit for 24 years as weapons instructor in the Infantry School. He's been assistant to the chief of the Weapons Section since 1940.

YANK 18 Aug 1944

Wave Winner

Frances Doyle SK2c has been elected "Miss Air Wave" by her admiring shipmates in a contest held at Floyd Bennett Field, New York.

YANK 18 Aug 1944

Cartoon

"What's so funny about this Sad Sack cartoon?"

Cartoon by Sgt. Syd Landi

Yank 18 Aug 1944

Yaks

Russian GIS pose with Yak 9s, Red Army fighter planes. These Yaks, manned by Russian pilots, protect U. S. shuttle-bombers as they near Soviet bases.

YANK 18 Aug 1944

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Security Mission

Read the exciting story submitted by Pvt. Justin Gray about a harrowing day in the Italian War.

Read the full article HERE

YANK 18 Aug 1944

Sieg Heil!!

A wounded German officer, his game leg in the air, his other on a pillow, is hauled through the streets of Cherbourg in a cart by two captured German enlisted men.

YANK 18 Aug 1944

Prostitutes Charged

Two French prostitutes climb into a jeep after having been nabbed by U. S. MPs. They were charged with signaling to Germans with a flashlight from their hotel window.

Photo by Cpl. Joe Cunningham

YANK 18 Aug 1944

News From Home

Read all the news from home wild, wacky, crazy and sometimes dull but always interesting.

Read Maryland to North Dakota HERE

Read Ohio to Wyoming HERE

YANK 11 Aug 1944 Down Under Edition

Winged Wedding

Miami, Fla.

S/Sgt. Walt R Johnson of Chicago, Ill., was at the alter getting married here after a long hitch at a bomber base in Greenland where GIs use interphone language all day long.

The chaplain asked him the fateful question: "Do you, Walter take the woman, Helen, to be your lawful wedded Wife?"

Walt nodded nervously.

"Roger," he said.

YANK 18 Aug 1944

Hoist

A U. S. MP applies a dorsal hoist to a lagging German prisoner.

Photo by Cpl. Joe Cunningham

YANK 18 Aug 1944

Grateful Civilians

Grateful civilians dishing out a potful of food to a GI as the U. S. Army returned Cherbourg to it's French Mayor following withdrawal of Nazi troops.

Photo by Cpl. Joe Cunningham

YANK 18 Aug 1944

Dog Robber and his Officer

The arrogant and well-dressed Joe in front is a captured Nazi officer. The gloom-faced character beside him is his dog robber.

A "dog robber" is a term for a soldier or airman assigned to a commissioned officer as a personal servant. It is also sometimes refered to as a "batman or batwoman."

Photo by Cpl. Joe Cunningham

YANK 18 Aug 1944

Boys Meet Girls

Boys meet girls. Shapely Carole Landis and laughing Martha Tilton (who warbled with Benny Goodman's band) pose with Gis in New Guinea.

Photo by Sgt. Dick Hanley

YANK 18 Aug 1944

.45 at the ready

A GI holds his .45 at the ready while German prisoners, their arms above their heads, file by to an American command post.

Photo by Cpl. Joe Cunningham

YANK 18 Aug 1944

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Sniper Killer


Read the interesting article by Sgt. Walter Peters about T/Sgt. Frank Kwiatek and his talent for taking out Nazi snipers.

Read the article HERE

Art work by Sgt. Brodie

YANK 18 Aug 1944

German Pointers

An American soldier stands guard at a Cherbourg crossroads still lousy with lettered pointers left by the retreating Germans.

Photo by Cpl. Joe Cunningham
YANK 18 Aug 1944

VERY VERY

CHINA

Back in Oklahoma I knew a boy who used to say everything twice. Ask Hazlitt how he was feeling, and he'd say; "I'm feeling fine. I'm feeling line."

Ask him whether it would rain, and he'd say: "If it don't rain, it'll be a long dry spell. Yes sir, if it don't rain, it'll be a long dry spell.”

"Everything Hazlitt says," Eller Ardrey used to remark, "he makes a carbon copy of it." And Ben Holland thought Hazlitt would be a successful advertising man, "because he believes in repetition.”

The other day I ran across Hazlitt out here (in China). "Hazlitt," I asked, "how are you doing?" And he said: "I am doing all right. I am doing all right.”

"Are you getting plenty to eat?" "Plenty to eat. Plenty to eat."

"How do you feel about water-buffalo meat?"

"I like it." His face blanched. His cheeks expanded. He almost exploded. But even Hazlitt couldn't say that twice.

--Pvt. Cal Tinney

YANK Field Correspondent


YANK 18 Aug 1944

New From Home Maryland-North Dakota

Read clips from "News from Home" Maryland to North Dakota 11 Aug 1944

Read all the news HERE

YANK 11 Aug 1944 Down Under Edition

Motorcycle Half-track?

Moving up the lead (in the war in France) a trio is on a captured German NSU half-track motorcycle.

YANK 18 Aug 1944

Camping in Russia

Men of the Eastern Command, U.S. Strategic Air Forces in Europe, bunk in a tent in Russia.

YANK 18 Aug 1944

Jack Benny

Jack Benny makes music for a New Guinea native while fellow members of a USO troupe look and listen.

Photo by Sgt. Dick Hanley

YANK 18 Aug 1944