Thomas Ayres - A Military Miscellany: From Bunker Hill to Baghdad: Important, Uncommon, and Sometimes Forgotten Facts, Lists, and Stories from America#s Military History

From mid-1940 until 1945, U.S. production of war materials overwhelmed the great Axis factories of Krupp (Germany), Fiat (Italy), and Mitsubishi (Japan). During the war, America produced:

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To American production, without which this war would have been lost.

Joseph Stalin, offering a toast at a meeting of Allied leaders in Tehran, Iran, 1943

• From February 1942 until the end of the war, no civilian automobiles or trucks were manufactured in the United States. When production stopped, there were 500,000 vehicles in stock. The government promptly took title to all of them, stored them in warehouses, and carefully doled them out to the military and to civilian applicants like country doctors, farmers, scientists, and individuals critical to defense production.

• Owning an automobile was not easy for a nonpriority citizen. A class A stamp on the windshield entitled the owner to only three gallons of gasoline a week. Many a vehicle sat idle because tires were unavailable and there were no parts for repairs.

• Some citizens began riding bicycles, until they also were rationed and replacement tires became unavailable. Walking was not a good option because civilians were limited to only two pairs of shoes a year. As a result, Americans witnessed a return of the horse and buggy in some rural areas. Old bicycles built for two (popular at the turn of the century) were hauled out of barns and woodsheds, as were cars from another era. Baker Electric Cars made a brief comeback, and puffing Stanley Steamers, last manufactured in 1925, occasionally were seen.

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And when I die, please bury me Neath a ton of sugar by a rubber tree; Lay me to rest in an auto machine, And water my grave with gasoline.

A popular home front jingle in World War II

• From autumn 1942 to the summer of 1944, whiskey disappeared from store shelves. Enterprising distillers tried to bridge the drought with substitutes made from some unlikely products. Old Spud, distilled from waste potatoes, required a palate adjustment.

• While GIs lit up Camels and Lucky Strikes, civilian smokers puffed on strange-tasting new brands with names like Fleetwood. Many questioned whether these new cigarettes contained tobacco at all.

• Sliced bread became a delicacy of the past when the government removed slicing machinery from bakeries for the metal content. Bread came in whole loaves.

• Home-front fashion took a beating. Ladies stockings came in a bottle and had to be painted on legs. Seams were drawn down the backs of legs with eyebrow pencils. Men's pants came minus cuffs and coats without lapels.

• Diapers were scarce. Moms coped by using scrap materials. Remarkably, a generation of U.S. babies survived.

Unknown to most Americans and little noted by historians is the fact that 11,000 U.S. troops invaded Russia in 1918 and some remain buried there. Even as the U.S. entered World War I, civil war raged in Russia as the Bolsheviks tightened their grip on the country after overthrowing Czar Nicholas.

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There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory but, boys, it is all hell.

General William T. Sherman, addressing cadets following the Civil War

Anxious to assist remnants of the czar's White Army opposing the communist takeover, on August 15, 1918, President Woodrow Wilson broke diplomatic ties with the Bolshevik government. Within three weeks, 7,000 U.S. Marines had landed at the port city of Vladivostok on the coast of Siberia. Another 4,000 troops were dispatched to the far north of Russia to join British soldiers already fighting there. In Siberia, Marines fought beside their Japanese allies in support of the White Army.