The headline of the paper reads: AEF Heading Toward Rommel US Tank Unit To Enter Oran.

Given that, this puts the date somewhere around Nov 8, 1942. Probably either ON that day, just after, or a couple days prior.

In a response to an earlier post I mentioned my father was in Walter Reed hospital in 1943. That was because he was a U.S. Army tank commander in North Africa in 1942 -- the story in the newspaper headline. And as Solo alluded to in the earlier post, they suffered many casualties in their small, outdated tanks.

One change - if you want to ride that trolley car in the right of the photo, you now have to go to the other end of the route, in Manheim, Pennsylvania.

The news vendor's smile is rendered ironic by the knowledge that when the AEF finally encountered Rommel's Africa Corps, the initial results would be neither pretty nor favorable to our cause.

America's oldest continually operating farmer's market - one of its pointed roofs can be seen to the left.

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That guy should have been selling MAD magazine (if it had been around back then).

Through Collins' lens, Lancaster, with a population of merely 60,000, managed to appear all urban bustle here in this moment reflected in the wet streets. I particularly like the graceful umbrella-dodge of the man at the left and the bent-over old lady in the white hat.