Today in World War II History—September 9, 1939 & 1944
German troops in a Polish town, September 1939 (German Federal Archive, Bild 101I-012-0037-23A)
80 Years Ago—September 9, 1939: Battle of Bzura (Kutno): Polish Army makes sole offensive of war, forcing Germans to withdraw from Warsaw.
First troops of British Expeditionary Force sail in convoy to France.
Surprise sneak preview of Gone with the Wind is held at the Fox Theater in Riverside, CA; producer David O. Selznick gauges the audience reaction.
Coldstream Guards, British Expeditionary Force landing at Cherbourg, France, Sept.-Oct. 1939. (Imperial War Museum)
75 Years Ago—Sept. 9, 1944: Canadians overrun German rocket bases on the Belgian coast.
US First Army enters the Netherlands near Maastricht.
Near Brest, France, four men of the US 2nd Ranger Battalion, led by Lt. Robert Edlin, with lots of bluffing and bravado, take Batterie Graf Spee at Locrist without firing a shot—and take 814 POWs.
The Coldstream Guards in the photograph appear to be wearing Service Dress, rather than the Pattern 39 uniform or the Pattern 37 uniform which had just been adopted. Interesting photograph.
Interesting! I didn’t know that. In the US, it often took months from adoption of a new uniform to when the soldiers received them. Maybe it was the same in the UK.