January 4th, 1942...Soviet troops retake Borovsk, near Moscow.
In the Philippines, Japan's General Masaharu Homma meets with Manila Mayor Jorge Vargas. After both smile for the camera, Homma imposes the Japanese Military Administration under Maj. Gen. Yoshide Hayashi. He in turn imposes a curfew, blackout, martial law, firearms turn-in, a ban on radio transmissions and listening to non-Japanese statements. He also warns that any hostile act against the Japanese will result in 10 Filipinos dying for every Japanese killed. All industries, factories, banks, schools, churches, and printing presses must come under Japanese control. The flying of the Filipino or US flags or singing of the "Star-Spangled Banner" is forbidden.
Meanwhile, back on Bataan, the 48th Japanese Division is pulling out while the 65th Brigade replaces it. The 48th is needed to invade Java. The 48th is a veteran outfit, but the 65th has only had a month's training. Not a bright decision by the Imperial Japanese Army.
In Malaya, the British get good news and bad news. The good news: reinforcements from India, the 11th Indian Brigade! The bad news: the troops are "very young, unseasoned, and undertrained."
At the front, the Japanese try an amphibious end run, which works, seizing Kuala Selangor. The Malayan capital of Kuala Lumpur is menaced. British Gen. Archibald Percival asks the Royal Navy to intercept the Japanese barges with light craft. The Royal Navy's Motor Torpedo Boats have all been bombed and sunk.
With the Royal Air Force pretty much out of action, Japan's nimble Zero and Oscar (the army knockoff of the Zero) fighters rule the sky, bombing and machine gunning the British all the time. British troops are sleepless and exhausted. Writes the Co of the 5/2nd Punjabs: "The battalion was dead tired; most of all the Commanders, whose responsibilities prevented them from snatching even a little fitful sleep. The battalion had withdrawn 176 miles in three weeks and had had only three days rest. It had suffered 250 casualties of which a high proportion had been killed. The spirit of the men was low and the battalion had lost 50 percent of its fighting efficiency."
Japanese aircraft bomb Rabaul, a key seaplane base, defended by 1,400 Australian troops.
January 5, 1942...In Malaya, Japanese troops continue to outflank the British by sea. More bad words on the 5/2nd Punjabis from their CO: "I found a most lethargic lot of men who seemed to want to do nothing but sit in slit trenches. They said they could not sleep because of the continued enemy air attacks. In fact, they were thoroughly depressed. There was no movement on the road, and the deadly ground silence emphasized by the blanketing effect of the jungle was getting on the men's nerves...The jungle gave the men a blind feeling."
The Japanese attack the 4/19th Hyderabad Rifles and leave behind 60 dead. The Japanese try again after midnight, and under moonlight and artillery, blast through.
In the occupied Netherlands, the Dutch Council of Churches protests the "complete lawlessness" of the German treatment of the Jews. The Germans react by deporting Dutch Jews from small towns, villages, and large cities across the nation.
With all this going on, a determined British officer stages the kind of feat that typifies England's history of individual initiative and irregular warfare.
Capt. Airey Neave is an Army officer being held PoW at Oflag 21B, the famed Colditz Castle, which is reportedly escape-proof. Neave proves this piece of Nazi propaganda wrong by teaming up with a Dutch officer, Tony Luteyn, to stage a daring escape. The two disguise themselves as Nazi officers, and simply walk out the back gate, barking at sentries who try to challenge them. Once out of range, Neave and Luteyn switch disguises from Wehrmacht gray to foreign-worker denim, and reach neutral Switzerland in a matter of days. From there, they go on through Vichy France to Spain, Gibraltar, and freedom. Neave is the first Briton to escape Colditz. His reward is to take over MI 9, the British intelligence department that helps PoWs escape. After the war, Neave (a peacetime barrister) is assigned to serve the indictments on the top Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg.
January 6th, 1942...The British advance in North Africa, "Operation Crusader," comes lumbering to a halt at El Agheila. After two months of fighting, both Axis and Allied forces are where they started in March 1941.
In Moscow, Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov condemns Nazi atrocities. The Nazis commit more.
In Malaya, Japanese troops leap out of trucks at Milestone 61 to fight the 5/2nd Punjabis. Indian defenses stall the Japanese armor, until they find loop roads. The battle rumbles down to Milestone 62. "The din...baffles description," writes a Punjab officer, Col. Deakin. "The tanks were head to tail, engines roaring, crews screaming, machine guns spitting, and mortars and cannons firing all-out. The platoon astride the cutting threw grenades, and one tank had its track smashed by anti-tank rifles. The two anti-tank guns fired two rounds one of which scored a bull, and then retired to the Argyll's area. One more tank wrecked itself on the mines."
For an hour the Punjabis' reserve company and HQ company takes on the attack. Then at 6:30, the Japanese realize they can outflank the Indians, and do so, charging the next battalion, the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. The Argylls take on Japanese T95 tanks with armored cars, equipped with Boys' anti-tank rifles, which are lethal only to their users. The Japanese blast pass the Scots, who are forced to retreat.
The British have enormous problems with communications, as dense jungle interferes with radios and telephone lines keep getting cut.
The Japanese finally reach the Slim River bridge, and scatter the 1/1st Gurkhas and shoot up the 137th Field Artillery Regiment. All that's left are some 40mm Bofors AA guns, and their shells, from 100 yards, bounce off the Japanese armor. The Japanese continue to advance, finally being stopped by the 155th Field Artillery Regiment's 4.5-inch field guns. The Japanese have disorganized two brigades (12th Brigade has ceased to exist and 28th Brigade has taken two-thirds losses) and robbed the British of large quantities of guns and transport, forcing them to abandon central Malaya. The British official history describes this battle as a "major disaster."
1,753 New Zealand troops arrive in Fiji to defend the British colony, escorted by HMNZS Achilles. 8th and 14th Brigades are now in position.
January 7, 1942...In France, partisans shoot a French policeman guarding a German army garage. The same day, Nazi troops in Yugoslvaia saddle up and launch their second anti-partisan offensive, driving Tito's forces 50 miles south. Despite the retreat and heavy losses, Tito's men fight on.
On the Eastern front, Soviet troops counterattack at Novgorod, north of Lake Ilmen, across a frozen swamp. Thousands of German soldiers are unable to fight, due to frostbite. Amputations and double amputations are frequent. Wounded men, lacking blankets, freeze to death in field hospitals, as the temperature dips to a nippy Minus 40 Celsius.
In China's Changsha Province, Chinese and Japanese troops fight a fairly pointless battle. Nobody wins.
In Malaya, the new Allied supreme commander, Field Marshal Lord Wavell, flies to Singapore to find out why the British are losing. He gets an earful. Australian Maj. Gen. Gordon Bennett blames the British for not training his 8th Australian Division, and promises to stop the Japanese advance himself. Brigadier Ivan Simson, the chief engineer, shows Wavell Singapore Island's north side, which is undefended. No defense works are being built, or even planned. Wavell, furious, asks Percival why this is so. Percival says defenses would be bad for morale. Wavell says that the impact would be greater when retreating troops begin crossing the causeway from the mainland. He orders Percival to build defenses. Percival doesn't. The only thing Wavell accomplishes is the removal of the detested Colonial Secretary, Stanley Jones.
January 8th, 1942...Rommel retreats from El Agheila to Agedabia, planning revenge.
HMNZS Achilles sails to Free French New Caledonia, where it provides additional anti-aircraft protection for the French colony.
January 9th, 1942...Soviet troops storm into Smolensk Province. All along the Russian front, German troops are dying in the snow. Faulty German economic planning and logistics has actually reduced Nazi tank and weapons production. At this point in the war, despite the myths of German efficiency, they are producing fewer tanks, guns, and planes than the British. They are, however, continuing to make Steinway pianos.
In the Philippines, the Japanese open up a huge artillery bombardment on what they think is the American lines. However, Japanese intelligence is faulty, and the Japanese merely shell empty jungle. The Japanese troops, looking like badly-wrapped parcels in their brown uniforms, advance through Bataan's mountains and jungle.
In Malaya, the British reorganize. 8th Australian Division, less its 22nd Brigade, along with 9th Indian Division, are now "Westforce," to stop the Japanese advance down the peninsula's west coast. Gen. Gordon Bennett's plan is to stop the Japanese with a series of ambushes, which work.
January 10th, 1942... In the Philippines, Japanese troops attack and their aircraft drop leaflets. One side calls upon Gen. Douglas MacArthur to surrender. The flip side says that MacArthur has already rejected the offer. "You are well aware you are doomed. The end is near. The question is how long you will be able to resist?" The Americans are grateful for the additional toilet paper and answer the propaganda with their own heavy artillery.
MacArthur himself makes his only visit to the Bataan peninsula that day. An artillery officer asks MacArthur if he wants to see some 155 guns. "I don't want to see them," MacArthur says, "I want to hear them!" The artilleryman obediently opens fire.
MacArthur's failure to return to Bataan, however, causes deep bitterness among his men.
All across the Dutch East Indies the Japanese roll on. Two heavy cruisers and eight destroyers unload troops at Tarakan. By day's end, the Japanese own the major oilfields.
The only Allied response is to create the American-British- Dutch Australian Command for the Indies, under Lord Wavell. This hurriedly-whipped up joint force becomes a lesson in how NOT to perform joint operations, as the four powers involved can't even agree on a common code for naval signal flags.
In Russia, Soviet troops surround 100,000 Germans at Demyansk. Field Marshal Ritter Von Leeb, an owlish and competent product of the German general staff system, asks Hitler for permission to retreat. The Fuhrer refuses. Leeb resigns, and goes home to Bavaria to spend the rest of the war sulking and write his memoirs.
