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1942: Protecting the ruins

This sort of thing might really have taken place. If you did not want your ruins to be further damaged you would need to protect them. They would also need to have been rather important to justify all this protection.

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1943: What indeed?

I suppose the answer was obvious at the time. Was it a blanket, or a carpet, or perhaps a curtain? The point is that efforts were being made to cope with shortage of new materials.

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1943: Military Law

Fairly strong satire at work here. Lacking the long established traditions of the Navy and the Army, the newcomer RAF was often treated to this kind of humour.

We might well wonder what kind of offence has been committed. The accused, by the way, is the one not wearing his hat.

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1941: Wartime badges for the boy scouts

HEs are, of course, high explosives. The badges were meant to show proficiency in dealing with different kinds of bombs. I am fairly confident that no such badges actually existed.

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1943: Food again

I can’t imagine that I would have said that at the time. Food was a frequent subject of conversation. This joke implies that the boy is going to eat that potato with reluctance. Really? As I remember it would have gone my throat with enthusiasm.

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1942: Woman at work

Many women were employed as riveters in the munitions industry. Here we see one who has tried to mix business with pleasure.

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That made me chuckle...

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1943: Saving the heating fuel

The fire would definitely have been a coal fire. This was also rationed. The two groups of people all used their bicycles in order to reach each others’ home. Petrol was only available to people who had official need, such as doctors on call.

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1941: Aggressive Shopping

I do not remember this sort of shopping during the war. I was often sent off to queue on Saturdays when I wasn’t at school. Queuing was a way of life when so many things were in short supply. I obviously can’t say that this sort of thing never happened but I can say that I never witnessed it.

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1942: Fire watching

As I remember it fire watching occurred on premises of importance. The principle behind this practice was that incendiary bombs could be rendered harmless if someone was on hand to extinguish the flames immediately. Sand buckets and a water supply were on hand but someone had to there to use them. People used to take turns to perform this function. Like a lot of wartime activities there was frequent boredom with occasional frantic and dangerous activity.

The joke here is that at a conventional upper middle class dinner the ladies would leave the dining room to ’powder their noses’ while the gentlemen would smoke their cigars and drink their brandies. Here the custom has been altered. Instead of joining them in the drawing room they would be joining them on the roof.