Magic at War

Will Rock was one of many magicians drafted into military service during World War Two. At the time, Rock was one of America’s foremost illusionists. Luckily for him, the army chose to make use of his magic skills, by putting him in charge of entertainment in a key training centre. Throwing his all into the task, Rock becoming a first-class soldier sorcerer for Uncle Sam.   Born William George Rakauskas in Lithuania in 1907, Will Rock and his family emigrated to the U.S.A. when he was five years old, settling in Detroit, Michigan. As a young man he worked at a car factory, but left to pursue a career in magic. Inspired by magicians such as Eugene Laurant, Rock put together act and, by 1928, he was performing in the lesser vaudeville circuits. In 1931 he became an assistant to The Great Raymond, learning his craft and saving up the money needed to mount his own show.  Will Rock, 1938 (Source: Genii Magazine) In 1938, two years after Howard Thurston ‘the last greatest magici...

"I am informed by the Fuhrer that the big rocket bomb weighs 14 tons. This, of course, is a devastating murder weapon. I suspect that when the first projectiles plunge down into London, the English public will panic." - Josef Goebbels, Nazi propaganda minister An hour before sunrise on 13 June 1944, two members of the Royal Observer Corps were on duty at their post on the top of a Martello tower on the seafront at Dymchurch in Kent, England. At that moment, they spotted the approach of a flying object spurting red flames from its rear  and with  the sound of a roaring engine. This was the  first V-1 (Fi 103) flying bomb to be released against Britain and it was rattling towards them. A week earlier, the D-Day and the Normandy landings, had signalled the beginning of the end of the war in Europe. Unkindly, just when the possibility of success and peace looked not too far away, Hitler's  Vergeltungswaffen 1 (German: Vengeance Weapon 1), known as the 'doodlebu...