January 25th, 1942...HMNZS Achilles leaves Devonport in Auckland, and goes to sea.

Japanese troops land at Lae, New Guinea. The Emperor's forces now stand astride the only land route to New Guinea's southern side, the undefended Kokoda Track. Australia reacts by ordering full mobilization. 16-year-olds and 50-year-olds find themselves in militia units that lack rifles and bullets. Air- raid trenches are dug in Sydney parks. The Royal Australian Air Force's Hudson patrol bombers attack Japanese shipping at Rabaul.

Thailand's pro-Axis puppet government declares war on the United States and the British Empire.

In North Africa, Erwin Rommel's tanks capture the crossroads of Msus, as they maintain the pace of their offensive. They drive British Gen. Sir Frank Messervy's 1st Armoured Division from the field. The Germans capture 96 tanks, 38 guns, and 190 trucks. German Maj. F.W. Von Mellenthin calls it, "One of the most extraordinary routs of the war." 8th Army commander, Gen. Neil Ritchie, overruling plans to retreat, orders his men to stand their ground.

January 26th, 1942...US troops of the 34th Infantry Division under Maj. Gen. Ryder arrive in Northern Ireland. Irish Republic Prime Minister Eamon De Valera protests this violation of Irish neutrality. American troops quickly make friends with the friendly Ulster people and learn about tea, rain, and driving on the left-hand side of the road.

The same day, Japanese troops land on the northern Solomon Islands.

In the Philippines, the Japanese try to reinforce their outflanking movement on Bataan, but their troops come ashore on the wrong beach, and are defeated.

In Malaya, the 22nd Australian Brigade chews up the 40th Japanese Infantry Regiment, but the British have to retreat to Singapore Island anyway. Percival signals Wavell: "Consider general situation becoming grave. With our depleted strength it is difficult to withstand enemy ground pressure combined with continuous and practically unopposed air activity. We are fighting all the way but may be driven back into the island within a week."

Despite cold weather in Russia, the Luftwaffe continues to fly, as Luftwaffe Chief of Staff Erhard Milch ordered winter kit for his fliers and ground crew. However, temperatures of Minus 63F slow down operations. Even so, Lt. Max Stotz manages to rack up 170 kills before being shot down.

In Yugoslavia, the Nazis send several hundred Jewish women and children on foot in the snow from Ruma to Zemun. "Children were freezing in the arms of their mothers, who tried to warm them in the embrace," writes a witness. "Mothers buried the frozen children quickly in the snow, hoping that others would bury them properly when spring arrived. The wife of Kurt Hilkovec lost her three children on the way. The youngest, born in Sabac, froze in her arms." The destination of this march is a concentration at Sajimste, where all who survive are killed in May.

In North Africa, further fighting is cancelled by sandstorms. Rommel pauses to drink tea and read decrypted British messages of top British generals squabbling over whether to retreat or fight. Meanwhile his men accumulate supplies and scavenge the field for booty. British rations are highly prized, as the German field ration is called "A.K.," for "Old Horse," suggesting the source of the meat. Italian ration kits include pasta, which requires water to be cooked...a major problem in the waterless desert. British troops of the 1st Armoured Division lick their wounds.

January 27th, 1942...HMNZS Achilles rendezvous with a troopship enroute to Fiji, and escorts the trooper and its US forces into the islands' harbor.

In Malaya, Percival has more bad news for Wavell: the British can't hold the last province of Malaya north of Singapore, Johore, for more than four days, and are down to nine fighters. Wavell orders Percival to withdraw from the mainland.

Bureaucrats rejoice with the formation of the Anglo-US Chiefs-of-Staff Committee, the Pacific Council, the Anglo-US Raw Materials Board, and the Combined Shipping Adjustment Board. Despite these pompous-sounding titles and bickering between British and American officers, these organizations actually prove to be extremely capable, showing democracy's great flexibility and adaptability in times of stress.

The Allies also authorize wheat shipments to Greece that day, relieving starving people in Nazi captivity.

Both Adolf Hitler and Dwight D. Eisenhower are in thoughtful moods this day. Hitler says, "The Jews must pack up, disappear from Europe." Eisenhower criticizes US policy of "giving our stuff in driblets all over the world, with no theatre getting enough," and adds, "We must win in Europe."

Among the German troops besieging Leningrad is a regiment of 1,000 Dutchmen, members of the Dutch Volunteer Legion. This outfit of pro-Nazi renegades and traitors serves in the trenches outside Leningrad for a year, equipped with its own Dutch Red Cross unit. This day, the Dutch Nazis spend the day posing for pictures for their own special propaganda company of 50 reporters and photographers.

Rommel wheels on Benghazi from Msus. South African reconaissance planes spot Rommel's diversionary move, and the British swallow the bait, moving 1st Armoured Division on the diversion.

January 28th, 1942...Another big day for the US Navy as the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise becomes the first heavy ship to refuel at sea by night, doing so in the central Pacific at 8 p.m. from the oiler USS Platte, under blackout conditions. The evolution takes five hours, and is successful.

In Singapore, Percival summons his commanders and finds he has no reserves. He orders his men to retreat to Singapore across the 1,100-yard causeway. As the exhausted troops come shuffling back, they find the impregnable fortress is one only in name. Only one 15-inch gun points northward, and it's equipped with armor-piercing shot, useless against troops.

Russian Marshal Konstantin Timoshenko advances into the Ukraine. The Ukrainians are happy to see him, as the Nazis have been practicing massacres. In the Crimean city of Feodosiya, the Nazis hang 36 captured partisans. In Dzhankoi, the Gestapo arrests 76 "suspicious people," and shoots 76 after interrogation.

In North Africa, sandstorms are replaced by pouring rain. Rommel leads his men from the front, keeping the panzers pushing west.

Rommel's troops enter Benghazi as the British retreat. The city changes hands for the fourth time. One more to go. German troops find most of the city in ruins, but the cinema is intact, so they all troop up to see a rerun of "Victory in the West," a Nazi propaganda film, which is better than nothing.

The "Mighty 8th" US Army Air Force is formed in Georgia. They will go on to bomb Germany.

January 29th, 1942...Lt. Roger W. Mehle, engineering officer of VF-6, aboard USS Enterprise, comes up with a solution to the F4F Wildcat's lack of armor plate...he installs cockpit armor, made of boiler plate, behind the seat of every F4F in the squadron. Enterprise is heading for the Marshall Islands, to launch America's counteroffensive against Japan.

The ANZAC area is established by the Anglo-American Combined Chiefs of Staff in Washington. This operational zone covers the ocean between Australia, New Zealand, and French New Caledonia, and comes under US overall command, not including New Zealand forces actually in New Zealand.

Japanese troops mark this move by invading Russel Island, east of New Guinea, tightening the ring around Australia.

In Malaya, Maj. Angus Rose of the 2nd Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders tries to set up a strongpoint on a golf course. The club secretary says "Nothing can be done until we've called a meeting of the committee."

In Russia, Soviet troops inflict heavy losses on German forces near Kaluga.

In North Africa, Rommel's troops drive on from Benghazi to Barce, a former Italian farming settlement, built in a snappy 1930s art-deco style. However, high explosive blows the buildings to bits.

The British and Soviets sign a treaty with Iran's Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi. (who holds his throne until forced to flee by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979) British and Soviet troops will remain in Iran until six months after the end of the war. The Iranian route will be the principal conduit for Allied war supplies to the Soviet Union.

January 30th, 1942...HMNZS Achilles leaves Fiji.

The last two surviving pipers of the 2nd Battalion Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders march across the Johore Causeway from Malaya to Singapore, playing "Hielan' Laddie," leading the battalion. After the last 250 survivors march across, the causeway is dynamited, severing Singapore's land link with Malaya.

In Singapore, frenzied preparations are made for defense. Newspapers are censored ("the island is not besieged, it is invested"), movie theaters are turned into food dumps, dancehalls are closed, curfew is imposed, looters to be punished by shooting.

Japanese troops attack Chinese and British forces at Moulmein in Burma.

In Berlin, Adolf Hitler celebrates the ninth anniversary of his coming to power ("The Day of German National Re-awakening") by addressing a packed house at the Sportspalast. He says, "The result of this war will be the complete annihilation of the Jews."

January 31st, 1942...A Japanese plane comes within 35 miles of USS Enterprise and fails to spot her. Next day, Enterprise aircraft bomb the plane's base.

In Malaya, Percival takes command of all defending forces in Singapore. He has 85,000 men from 13 British battalions, six Australian, 17 Indian, and two Malay. The Japanese are attacking with less than 40,000 men. But many British troops have just got off their ships, are short of weapons, and some haven't completed basic training.

The remaining planes are flown out that day, and the $240 million Navy base that took 17 years to build is evacuated in panic -- half-finished meals litter the galley -- and nearly all the equipment, ranging from enormous drydocks to cases of Johnny Walker Black, are left behind. The army, however, using 120 trucks, seizes all kinds of useful supplies.

Meanwhile, the top Japanese general in Malaya, Tomoyuki Yamashita, toasts his officers with sake, and tells his men it will take four days to reconnoiter the Johore Strait between his men and Singapore, and warns that he suspects that he will be murdered by Japan's Prime Minister Tojo.

Nazi Operation Situation Report USSR No. 170 sent from Berlin to 60 recipients tells all 60 that in the previous six days, in the Crimea, "3,601 people were shot: 3,286 of these were Jews, 152 were Communists and NKVD agents, 84 partisans, and 79 looters, saboteurs, and asocial elements. In all to date: 85,201." Soviet statisticians are at work too, noting that five months of starvation, cold, and siege in Leningrad have killed more than 200,000 citizens.

However, there is some hope for Leningrad that day...a shorter ice road over Lake Ladoga is opened, and in the ensuing three months, 554,186 citizens will be evacuated to safety, along with 35,713 wounded Soviet soldiers.

New Zealand continues to dig in for war by introducing air- raid shelter regulations, and inviting women to join the Emergency Precaution Service and as fire-watchers. All men must register for the Emergency Defence Corps.