Jean Lai Romsey, center right, in Calcutta, 1942. She was present in Calcutta (now Kolkuta) when the Japanese started bombing the city in 1942. She wrote in her online blog in 2013: “I was just over three years old as we watched from the foothills of the Himalayas at Siliguri, where we finally arrived just before the Japanese started to drop their bombs on Calcutta at night time, causing the skyline to glow fiery red with every target they hit, and the explosions blasting fear into our hearts. I could still remember my knees trembling, just looking at the burning glow below us.” For more background about her and her family, click here.
By: Phil Kohn. Dedicated to the memory of his father, GM3 Walter Kohn, U.S. Navy Armed Guard, USNR, and all men and women who have answered the country’s call in time of need. Phil can be contacted at ww2remembered@yahoo.com.
There is heavy fighting at Buna, Papua-New Guinea, on December 18, 1942, as U.S. and Australian troops face tenacious Japanese resistance. Some 565 miles to the northwest on the north coast of Papua-New Guinea, the Imperial Japanese Army occupies Aitape and Wewak. In North Africa, elements of the Panzerarmee Afrika begin withdrawing westward in small units, ending the Battle of El Agheila in a victory for the British Eighth Army.
At Stalingrad, the Luftwaffe flies 250 tons of supplies to Field Marshal Friedrich Paulus’s surrounded Sixth Army on December 19. The supplies are less than half the minimum needed to simply maintain the force. Even this inadequate level of supply is never again reached.
The Japanese bomb Calcutta, India, for the first time on December 20. An 8,000-ton Japanese merchant ship strikes a mine placed by an American submarine off Cape Inubo, Japan, east of Tokyo. The vessel is the first sunk by U.S. forces in Japanese home waters.
On December 21, British troops cross the Indian border and head southeast toward Akyab, Burma. From Russia, Field Marshal Paulus requests permission to attempt a breakout by his encircled Sixth Army. Hitler refuses, insisting that Stalingrad be held. The question is moot, however, as Paulus lacks the fuel needed to attempt the breakout.
In the U.S., an avalanche in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, on December 22 kills 26 people when two 100-ton boulders fall onto a bus carrying steel-mill employees home from work. In Russia, the Red Army retakes Morozovsk, a town 165 miles northeast of Rostov-on-Don. In Kraków, Poland, six members of the Jewish Combat Organization, a part of the Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa), blow up two cafés popular with members of the SS and the Gestapo. Between 20 and 50 patrons of the establishments are killed.
By December 23, the three Panzer divisions of Field Marshal Erich von Manstein’s Army Group Don — tasked with “rescuing” the encircled Sixth Army — have advanced to within 30 miles of Stalingrad. The relief force, however, has exhausted its fuel, and must begin to withdraw towards its starting line. The Sixth Army remains trapped at Stalingrad. In North Africa, combat comes to a sudden halt in Tunisia as heavy rains turn the battlefield into an impassable sea of mud.
In Algiers, Algeria, on December 24, Vichy French Adm. Jean Darlan is assassinated by Bonnier de la Chapelle, a 20-year-old former Free-French Resistance member, apparently acting on his own. In Russia, following the suspension of “Operation Winter Tempest” (the relief of the Sixth Army at Stalingrad) by the Germans, the Red Army begins an offensive against Army Group Don, breaking through the lines of the 4th Romanian Army. The Soviets take Tatsinskaya Airfield, near Rostov-on-Don, an important German base for flying supplies into Stalingrad. The Luftwaffe evacuates 124 transport planes, but they leave behind 46 aircraft that are either damaged, destroyed or simply abandoned. Inside Stalingrad, the Soviet 62nd Army retakes the Red October metallurgical factory.
