military@att.att.com (Bill Thacker) (12/09/89)
From: military@att.att.com (Bill Thacker) Saturday, 9 December, 1939 Corporal Thomas Priday (King's Shropshire Light Infantry) becomes the first British soldier killed during the war. He is killed while leading a patrol on the Western Front. The US Navy expands its motor torpedo boat force, ordering 11 MTB's of British design from the Electric Boat Company. New submarine chasers are also contracted for. For the first time since the signing of the German-Soviet Nonagression Pact, the Soviet presses criticizes Germany. Tass reports that Germany has sent antiaircraft guns and artillery to Finland by way of Scandinavian ports, and is allowing transit of Italian armaments destined for Finland. -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- Bill Thacker military@cbnews.att.com Send submissions for "50 Years Ago" to military-request@att.att.com "Bicycles, suitcases, gramaphones, watches, wallets, cigarette cases and radios were scattered on the ground in the villages and the roads. To all appearances, they had been discarded in haste. But at the first touch they would explode... The army was sustaining losses and the men were afraid to advance. Something had to be done promptly or the entire operation would collapse. Yet we had no effective defense against mines and were absolutely unprepared for such a contingency. Zhdanov and I consulted several Leningrad engineers, including a group of instructors headed by Professor N.M. Izyumov from the Military Academy of Communications. We described the situation and said that we needed mine detectors. Thinking it over they said that it could be done and asked how much time they had. Zhdanov replied: `Twenty-four hours.' `Twenty-four hours ? But that's impossible.' `Impossible, yet it has to be done. The troops are in great difficulty. The success of the war depends on your invention.' The engineers and instructors left us excited and somewhat nonplussed. But on the following day the first model of the mine detector was ready." - K. Meretskov, in "Serving the People", related in _The Russian Version of the Second World War_, G. Lyons, ed.