On this day: Soldiers are Welcomed Home

From the collection of the Australian War Memorial, Canberra.

This image, dated the 14th of March, 1942, shows a train of soldiers of the 7th Division being welcomed home by women and children in the suburbs of Adelaide, South Australia. They had just disembarked from His Majesty’s Transport Orcades and were returning from fighting in the Middle East.

This division of the Australian Army was formed in February of 1940, as part of the Second Australian Imperial Force in the Second World War.

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On this day: British troops back from Tunisia

This photograph, from the 26th of December, 1942, is of officers from Britain’s 2nd Battalion, Parachute Regiment. They are resting near Beja in Portugal after a drop on Depienne, Tunisia.

The officer’s names are: Captain Stark, Lieutenant Braylet and Major Ashford.

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On this day: a Christmas parade during the war

From the collection of the Australian War Memorial, Canberra. X

12th December 1942: Australian designed and manufactured Owen guns make up part of the display in the Christmas parade in the streets of Sydney.

The submachine gun was used by the Australian Army from 1943 until the 1960s.

Above is an image of women of the Australian Women’s Army Service training with the guns in Queensland.

On this day: a pub in London

This photograph, taken on the 26th of September, 1942, is of famous London pub The Prospect of Whitby.

Claiming to be London’s oldest riverside public house, a tavern has stood on this site since approximately 1520.

The Japanese conquest of Burma.

The Japanese invasion and conquest of Burma concluded in May, 1942. The campaign marked the beginning of Japan’s years-long campaign in the South-East Asian region in the Second World War.

In the image below, Japanese troops can be seen lined up at the Burmese border in January, shortly before the invasion began.

On this day: the Doolittle Raid

The Doolittle Raid, a series of US bomb attacks on Japan, took place on the 18th of April, 1942. Also called the Tokyo Raid, it was seen as retaliation for the Pearl Harbor attack a few months before.

On this day: the bombing of Darwin

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The first of Japan’s Second World War attacks on Darwin, Australia occurred on the 19^th of February, 1942.

The same fleet that bombed Pearl Harbor bombed the Northern Territory, but considerably more bombs were dropped on Australia than in the US.

Darwin Post Office destroyed X

The attack came in two waves, and hundreds of people – including civilians – were killed. It was the beginning of many Japanese attacks on Australia (there were approximately 100 more attacks), who had been involved in the conflict since the beginning of the war.