While the opening of Sydney's Metro City Circle Line was widely reported across Australasia, thousands of miles away on the Eastern European Battlefield, the campaign had reached its most critical juncture.
The two deserving protagonists were, naturally, the German Central Army Group, now pressing in on Moscow, and the Russian Reservist Army Group tasked with defending it.
Around Moscow, the armies were fighting so fiercely that, in some areas where fire was concentrated, the smoke from gunpowder explosions almost engulfed the entire battlefield, reducing visibility to mere tens of meters.
How fierce was the war between the two sides? Currently, on the battlefields surrounding Moscow, at least 30,000 soldiers died each day, with nearly 20,000 of them being from the Russian army.
But it was precisely these Russian new recruits, with little training, who stubbornly resisted the powerful onslaught of the German Central Army Group and swore to defend Moscow to the death.
