Word: communiqu
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...week a Navy Department bulletin caused a reporter to write from Washington: "United States fighter planes have scored a smashing victory over the Japanese at Guadalcanal, shooting down 37 of an attacking force of 98 planes, with a loss of seven American craft, the Navy announced today in a communiqué that told of the greatest aerial battle in the Solomons since last winter...
...next day the Navy issued another communiqué. This one showed that, far from being a smashing victory, the battle was: 1) an exchange of equipment which, if anything, favored the Japanese; 2) an alarming indication of the use to which the Japanese could put their new concentrations of air power in the South Pacific...
...killed 4,000,000 Germans. Adolf Hitler last fortnight put his dead at 542,000. What was the truth? Citizens of the democracies could still read and listen to what both sides said, and draw their own conclusions. One conclusion has been that you cannot always trust army communiqués-even from your own army...
Faced with the problem of reporting the true state of the battle while withholding facts which might comfort the enemy, few generals find it easy to state the bitter, unqualified truth in communiqué or other public utterance. One of the frankest admissions of modern times was Lieut. General ("Vinegar Joe") Stilwell's after retreating from Burma: "I claim we got a hell of a beating." Classic example of the frank general is the Greek Pyrrhus. Upon receiving congratulations on his costly victory over the Romans at Asculum (279 B.C.), he replied: "Another such victory and we are undone...
...Fought in General MacArthur's territory chiefly by Navy ships outside his command, the Coral Sea battle was reported simultaneously from Melbourne and Washington. MacArthur's communiqués hinted that land-based bombers had a big share in the battle that saved Port Moresby from the Japs. Navy men now say that not an Army bomb hit a Jap ship in the Coral...