July 19th, 1942...The Japanese offensive continues to roll as amphibious forces leave Rabaul to invade Buna on the north coast of New Guinea, at the other end of the Kokoda Trail from Port Moresby.

Hitler orders his U-boats to turn from the Barents Sea, where Allied convoy efforts have been defeated, to the North Atlantic.

Rear Adm. Victor Alexander Charles Crutchley arrives in Auckland with his Task Force 44, three Australian cruisers and one American. Crutchley, Australia's top Sailor, is an imposing seadog with a massive red beard, holder of the Victoria Cross for the daring 1918 raid on Ostende. Crutchley is assigned to command the force of cruisers and destroyers that will screen the amphibious transports off Guadalcanal.

On the piers of Wellington's five-berth Aotea Quay, US Marines are discovering that the supplies sent to them from the States were commercially loaded, not combat-loaded. This means the supplies are crammed into each hull to fill it, instead of reverse order of that in which it will be needed, such that ammunition is on top, toilet paper below.

Col. Randolph M. Pate, division supply officer, has to take all the cargo out of the merchant ships and re-pack. Lacking time and space, all excess bedrolls and company property is stored, along with 75 percent of the heavy vehicles. Supply stocks are slimmed from 90 days to 60 and ammunition reserves down to 10 days.

To make life hell, New Zealand dock unions do not cooperate. They insist on regular tea breaks and will not work in inclement weather. The furious Marines summon New Zealand police, who order the wharfies off the docks. In New Zealand's driving winter rain, Marines off-load and re-load their supplies. Rain melts flimsy cardboard packaging, washes labels off cans, and makes cartons split open and spill their contents on the ground. The docks turn into a marsh with dunes of cornflakes, clothing, candy bars, cigarettes and tin cans, damaging US morale.

A busy day for Heinrich Himmler, head of the Gestapo, as he orders the "total cleansing" of the entire Jewish population of the "General Government" of occupied Poland, to be accomplished by Dec. 31st. The SS wastes no time to carry out his order.

In Egypt, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's Panzerarmee Afrika faces the British 8th Army in the desert heat. The Afrika Korps is down to 42 fit tanks. The Italian 20 Corps is down to 50 tanks. Rommel's plan is to hold his ground and rely on landmines, most of them captured British devices unearthed at Matruh. Rommel devotes every man and vehicle to distributing these mines.

Meanwhile, Rommel's opposite number, Gen. Sir Claude Auchinlek, boosted by 6 NZ Brigade and an Indian brigade, prepares yet another counterattack.

July 20th, 1942...Glum, ailing, and bored in Libya's Derna, Benito Mussolini cancels plans to lead a grand victory parade in Cairo, and flies back (with his white charger) to Rome. The future does not look very bright, he says. "He looked desperately ill and tired," writes one of his ministers. "It was announced that the exhaustion caused by his strenuous duties had brought on an attack of amoebic dysentery." A rumor flies around Rome that Il Duce is dying. "Perhaps he is dying," says another minister, "But not of dysentery. It's a less commonplace disease. It's called humiliation."

Some 1,800 Japanese troops sail from Rabaul to invade Buna in New Guinea.

Another German anti-partisan operation in Russia unrolls, Operation Eagle. The Soviet target is the Chechevichi region in Belorussia. The same day, in the nearby village of Kletsk, several hundred Jews who are about to be murdered set their ghetto on fire and run. Most are killed by Nazi machine gun fire. A few reach the forests and join the Partisans.

Across the steppes, German tanks rumble on towards Rostov, through thick clouds of dust. The Soviets are retreating in good order, leaving behind only a few wounded and some flags, taking their heavy equipment. But Hitler's mood is euphoric at his Tac HQ at Vinnitsa in the Ukraine. He tells Gen. Franz Halder, "The Russian is finished."

Halder replies, "I must admit, it looks like it."

Lt. Gen. "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell submits a plan to Chiang Kai-Shek, calling for Allied cooperation to re-take Burma, thus opening the land route to China. Chiang says he'll think about it. That evening, Stilwell makes a radio broadcast paying tribute to Chinese troops, saying the Chinese soldier "endures untold privations without a whimper, he follows wherever he is led without question or hesitation, and it never occurs to his simple and straightforward mind that he is doing anything heroic. He asks for little and always stands ready to give all." The broadcast is not a model of tact. Stilwell writes of it, "Broadcast at 9 p.m. 15 minutes of garbage. J.W. Stilwell one minute."

He also notes in his diary that the Japanese are making peace overtures to China, and that Chiang's government has a great deal of sympathy for Hitler. Chiang's best troops have been trained before the war by German officers, and Chiang fields his own secret police in imitation of the Gestapo, to take on his main enemy, Mao Ze-Dong's Communist forces. Unless China gets more help, Chiang may quit the war, freeing up thousands of Japanese troops.

A photo-mosaic of the Lunga Beaches, the Guadalcanal invasion site, is finally ready in Australia, and is mailed to New Zealand.

The US 1st Marine Division issues its plans for Operation Watchtower, the invasion of Guadalcanal and Tulagi. They will be invaded simultaneously, along with the twin islands of Gavutu- Tanambogo, which are connected by a causeway.

Wendell Willkie tells the NAACP that "the attitude of the white citizens of this country toward the Negroes has undeniably had some of the unlovely characteristics of an alien imperialism...but that attitude is changing...Emancipation came to the colored race in America as a war measure...So we are finding under the pressure of this present conflict that long- standing barriers and prejudices are breaking down."

July 21st, 1942...At 10 a.m., USS Washington shoots off her Kingfisher seaplanes to land at Floyd Bennett Naval Air Station in Brooklyn. 15 minutes later, the battleship sweeps past Gravesend Bay and into lower New York Harbor. QM striker Hunter Cronin tells his pals that Brooklyn is to starboard and Coney Island to port with great authority, though he has never seen either, except on maps. At 1:17, the ship anchors off Fort Wadsworth, Staten Island at "quarantine." The harbor's master pilot, Charles Cottrell, arrives at 3:30, and conns the ship at 15 knots up the bay. Everyone not on watch crowds the deck to see New York's sights as Washington, surrounded by 13 tugboats, reaches Brooklyn Navy Yard. As soon as the ship is tied up, her evaporators and distillers are shut down, boilers allowed to die, and the ship takes power and water from the dock. Gangways are rigged, and the first visitor to board is a representative of the Borden Milk Company, offering 320 quarts of fresh milk for the general mess. The ship spends the rest of the day pumping out fuel and water before drydocking. To keep everyone reminded that a war is on, Air Defense stations are manned.

Retired Adm. William Leahy is appointed chief of staff to President Roosevelt. Leahy has been Chief of Naval Operations and ambassador to France.

In Nieswiez in Belorussia, Jews again fight back against German oppressors, and most are shot down. A few flee to set up a partisan unit.

Japanese troops land in New Guinea near Gona and Buna that evening, under heavy gunfire support, beating the Allies to seize the place. General Horii soon sends his men marching down the Kokoda Track to take Port Moresby, and they run into Australian militiamen. The Japanese use their usual outflanking tactics to seize Kokoda, and turn it into their main forward base.

The US Office of War Information, headed by Elmer Davis, announces American casualties since Pearl Harbor: 44,143, including 4,801 killed, 3,218 wounded, and 36,124 missing. Also announced that day is that 454,155 tons of scrap rubber were collected between June 15 and July 10.

Gerhard Kunze, 36, the US-born head of the German-American Bund, pleads guilty in US District Court to charges of conspiracy to commit espionage. And that'll be all for the German-American Bund.

Late that evening, Auchinlek shows his hand at western Ruweisat Ridge, hitting the Afrika Korps with 13th Corps under Gen. Strafer Gott. Gott intends to hurl five infantry and two tank brigades at Rommel, with 274 tanks and 300 guns shortly after nightfall. 2 NZ Division will advance north while the tanks and Indians advance west, charging into the El Mreir depression.

Meanwhile, the 9th Australian Division, supported by tanks, will attack in the north, presenting Rommel with a two-pronged counterattack that will encircle his forces.

5 NZ Brigade's CO, Brig. Howard Kippenberger, is not happy with the plan. Once again communications and coordination are poor. The commander of one British tank brigade insists his armour will not move by night, but assures the Kiwis the Germans will not do so either. 6 NZ Brigade's CO, Brig. George Clifton, returns to his HQ and dictates the following memo: "The Brigadier has returned from the divisional conference and says there will be another bloody disaster."

Other officers are unhappy, too. Gen. Leslie Morshead of 9th Australian Division complains to his boss, Gen. Ramsden of 30 Corps, that his men are once again the storm troops, and that British tanks will probably let him down again. Ramsden complains to Auchinlek, who goes to Ramsden's HQ to find out what's going on. Auchinlek goes "through the roof" when he hears Morshead's complaints, which he supports. The British agree to only use one Australian brigade. Auchinlek's chief of staff, Gen. Eric Dorman- Smith, says the plan is unsound and should be called off.

At dusk, the plan goes forward anyway. Guns open up the length of the front, and the British advance. The roar of heavy artillery drowns the crunch of tanks advancing over gravel, trucks and bren carriers behind them.

July 22nd, 1942...At 4 p.m. in Brooklyn, 11 yard tugs shove USS Washington into Navy Yard drydock No. 2, taking an hour and 20 minutes. Once the water is drained out of the dock and the ship stands on keel blocks, liberty call is blared.

Washington's 1,800 Sailors are beneficiaries of considerable largesse, receiving a thousand free tickets to New York attractions. SN Hunter Cronin goes to the Paramount Theater to watch Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, and Tommy Dorsey. Johnny Brown and his fellow shipfitters from Repair Division take the Brighton local to Prospect Park station to watch the Brooklyn Dodgers down the Boston Braves. (The Dodgers will win 100 games in 1942, but lose the pennant to St. Louis) Gun boss Harvey Walsh is a dinner guest at the Lamb's Club, where he delivers a suitable speech.

Japanese troops in New Guinea head up to Buna, and then onto the Kokoda Trail. Australian and American aircraft attack Japanese shipping off the north coast, blasting a transport. Japanese forces move inland to Kokoda.

At 5 a.m. at El Alamein, 6 NZ Brigade is 2,000 yards east of the El Mreir depression, advancing without tank support. As usual, Rommel counterattacks, hitting the Kiwis with his 42 tanks. Brig. Clifton calls for help, and two British tank brigades advance. They run smack into minefields and German 88 mm guns. The techniques of moving armor through minefields have been lost to the British with the 1941 capture of Gen. Richard O'Connor.

The inexperienced 23rd Armoured Brigade with its two regiments of Valentine tanks launches a charge at 8 a.m. They drive forward for a mile and a half before coming in range of German 50 mm and Krupp 88s, which open fire. German armor- piercing shells rip through the flimsy Valentines. 46 Royal Tank Regiment loses 13 tanks in minutes. By 10 a.m., the brigade has lost 93 of 104 Valentines and 150 officers and men.

Kippenberger watches this slaughter, horrified. As the tanks withdraw, they drive past Kippenberger's HQ. A British regimental commander apologizes for the affair, saying he feels bitterly humiliated. "I did not answer very graciously," Kippenberger writes.

Rommel's tanks rip through 6 Brigade, whose anti-tank guns are also write-offs due to mines. The British send up a truckload of Mark 74 grenades, better known as "Sticky Bombs," an anti-tank grenade. This unusual weapon's main feature is a sticky substance that fixes it to a tank's hull before it explodes. The Sticky Bombs are more useful for sabotage and as satchel charges. In any case, they never arrive. The truck hits a mine.

6 Brigade takes a beating. Brig. Clifton and brigade HQ are overrun. One battalion CO is killed, another is missing. 24th Battalion is almost totally destroyed. 25th is down to a rifle company.

In the north, the Australians attack Tell el Eisa and Tell el Makh Khad. 24th Australian Brigade and 50th Royal Tank Regiments endure very hard fighting, in which an Australian soldier earns a Victoria Cross. At nightfall, the Australians and tankers withdraw, leaving 23 wrecked tanks on the battlefield.

German defense of the 164th Regiment is extremely stubborn, and it is not until 7 p.m. when 1st Army Tank Brigade's 52 Valentines can advance. They rumble into the dark and promptly get lost. Next, 20 tanks are knocked out by mines. The lost tankers dig in.

"When evening came," Rommel writes, "we had scored an undoubted success."

Kippenberger is bitter: "Two infantry and two armoured brigades (in his sector) had been employed. They had made three unrelated attacks from different directions at different times. A single small Panzer division of some 20 or 30 tanks and a fifth- rate Italian infantry division easily dealt with all three attacks in succession and inflicted crippling losses."

Auchinlek is shaken by the inefficiency. Despite his best efforts, he cannot shake up his officers and eliminate the amateurism.

US Marines land in New Caledonia to ensure that the wavering pro-Vichy government of this French overseas department support the Allies.

In Wellington, the first clear day in weeks, US 1st Marine Division sorties in single file, bound for Guadalcanal.

The British refuse the US proposal for an invasion of France in 1942.

The Viceroy of India ends the ban on India's Communist Party.

The Nazis open the Treblinka Concentration Camp. Dr. Irmfried Eberl is appointed the first commandant. He already has considerable skill at mass murder. As head of the Nazi euthanasia program, he has overseen the deaths of 18,000 Germans in the last year and a half. At Treblinka, he is less effective. A month later, he is fired for inefficiency. His failure to dispose of bodies quickly creates panic among those in the incoming trains.

The camp is filled with Jews railroaded from the Warsaw Ghetto. In the first seven weeks of deportations from Warsaw, more than 250,000 Jews are taken to Treblinka and killed. It is the largest and swiftest slaughter of a community in World War II.

In Washington, the Office of War Information reports that the bodies of 29 German U-boat crewmen sunk by a destroyer on Atlantic patrol have been buried with full military honors in the national cemetery at Hampton, Va.

July 23rd, 1942...The Auckland Post Office loses the photo-mosaic of Guadalcanal's Lunga Beaches. It is found in 1986, and turns out to have little value. The Marines will fight the battle of Guadalcanal without ever possessing a satisfactory map of the place. The Americans believe there are 8,400 Japanese on Guadalcanal. There are actually only 2,571.

Life is growing worse for the exhausted and ailing Allied PoWs building the Burma-Siam railway. Their doctor, Australian Edward "Weary" Dunlop, notes the third death in a few days. Dunlop works with a minimum of medicine. His Korean guards steal the Red Cross bandages and use them as leggings for soccer games.

Dunlop diaries the work of PoW artist Ray Parkin, writing, "I hope that it will be a true record of the manner in which the human spirit can rise above futility, nothingness and despair, since truly we are left here with nothing."

That night, the PoWs perform Julius Caesar, "with modern dress. Audience very sympathetic, with absolutely no frivolity."

In Russia, the blitzkrieg rolls on. Hitler's panzers take Rostov-on-Don for the second (and last) time in the war, and find the place a wreck.

At Vinnitsa in the Ukraine, Hitler issues Directive No. 45, one of the most important orders of the war.

The document surprises everybody. Hitler's original plan calls for the 4th Panzer Army to grab Stalingrad, turn it over to the 6th Army's infantry, then become the mobile reserve. The other two armies were to take Maikop.

Now Army Group A must not only take Maikop, but fan out to seize all the Caucasus oilfields. 4th Panzers will swing south of Stalingrad and 6th Army will, on its own, smash the enemy concentration there, take the town, and cut off the isthmus between the Don and the Volga. Stalingrad is the natural place to anchor the eastern end of the flank defense line.

Hitler says, "If I do not get the oil of Maikop and Grozny, then I must end this war."

Hitler's generals are stunned. Army Group A must now cross the Caucasus range and 10,000-foot heights and passes. Both the Caucasus and Stalingrad must be taken simultaneously, straining the supply line. 4th Panzer Army must seize Stalingrad from the south.

Nonetheless, the Germans follow orders. Army Group B cranks up to blast a bridgehead over the Don at Kalach with one panzer and two infantry divisions. Field Marshal von Weichs will hurl 30 divisions (less than two-thirds German) and 1,200 aircraft at Stalingrad.

A massive sledgehammer is thus being aimed at the Don River, which is hardly defended at all.

At El Alamein, Brig. George Clifton returns to 2 NZ Division, having made a great escape. "It looked like becoming a habit for our senior officers to get captured, escape, and have breakfast with me." Later that day, one of Kippenberger's company commanders also shows up after his escape.

2nd New Zealand Division has suffered 904 losses in this battle, a heavy toll, and goes over to the defensive on the southern side of the Alamein line.

Both sides take a breather in the Alamein heat.

July 24th, 1942...The British and Americans finally agree that an invasion of Europe, "Sledgehammer," is out of the question for 1942. But they do agree to action in North Africa, in the form of an American-led invasion of Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia, all controlled by the pro-Axis Vichy French. The Allies believe that an American-led invasion of French North Africa could shift wavering French generals towards the Allied side, thus putting powerful Vichy French holdings, if not the country, into the war on the Allied side, and trapping Rommel's Afrika Korps in Libya in a giant vice.

US troops arrive in Fiji.

Australian troops fight a delaying action in the New Guinea jungles, falling back towards Kokoda, destroying a bridge.

Alabama Gov. Frank Dixon refuses to accept a US prison work defense supply contract because it bars discrimination. Dixon fulminates against Federal agencies trying to "break down the principle of race segregation." Gov. Eugene Talmadge of Georgia, another fire-eater, writes that he will enforce Jim Crow laws and warns any blacks opposing segregation to "stay out of Georgia."

July 25th, 1942...The tedium of hard work and drills on USS Washington is broken with a flurry of ruffles and bosun's whistles as Capt. Benson hands over the battleship to Capt. Glenn B. Davis, formerly assistant chief of the Bureau of Ordnance. Benson goes on to become Commodore of Convoy Operations. After the ceremony, it's back to work. Yardbirds install a new SG ("Sugar George") radar set on the battleship's foremast, the latest fire control technology. Cdr. Ed Hooper, main battery plotting officer, notes that the radar's positioning will make it blind through an arc of 80 degrees aft, and there is no guarantee an enemy will not attack Washington from astern. He points this out to gun boss Harvey Walsh, who passes it on to Davis. Davis has Hooper complain to the Chief of the Bureau of Ships to request the radar be put atop the foremast, rather than on it. No dice. The radar will be installed as ordered, and this will affect one of the decisive battles of World War II.

In the Pacific, USS Enterprise reaches Tonga, and hooks up with a force of transports loaded with Marines.

The Combined Chiefs of Staff agree upon the command setup for Operation Torch, the invasion of North Africa. Someone is needed to take charge of planning. Adm. Ernest J. King, in London, remarks "Well, you've got him right here. Why not put it under Eisenhower?" The British agree. Ike gets straight to work.