January 1942: London stands in ruins and covered in snow after German bombing in the Second World War. A crane and truck can be seen clearing debris.
St Paul’s Cathedral – which survived the Blitz – is in the background.
From the collection of the Imperial War Museums.
Two days before Halloween in 1942, a humorous vampire sign stands outside the British Army blood transfusion centre in the Western Desert of North Africa (regions in Egypt and Libya). Second World War.
8th October 1942: A house at Myilly Point in Darwin in Australia’s Northern Territory destroyed by a Japanese air raid.
Australia was bombed in about a hundred separate air raids between 1942 and 1943 during the Second World War.
From the collection of the Australian War Memorial, Canberra.
24th April 1942: Soviet women eat their breakfast next to a burning pile of rubbish in a Finnish concentration camp in Petrozavodsk, Karelia. The photograph was taken during the Continuation War, during World War Two, when Finland and Nazi Germany fought together against mostly Soviet troops.
2nd April 1943: A house in Darwin in Australia’s Northern Territory is severely damaged by a Japanese air raid.
Australia was bombed in about a hundred separate air raids between 1942 and 1943 during the Second World War.
From the collection of the Australian War Memorial, Canberra.
17th December 1942: Father Christmas presents British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s grandson – also named Winston – with a book of nursery rhymes for Christmas at a function at Admiralty House in London. The younger Winston was two at the time.
The younger Winston went on to become a Conservative politician. He married twice, had four children, and died of cancer in his late-sixties in 2010.
Horsewoman in the Australian Women’s Emergency Legion. September 1939. X
The Women’s National Emergency Legion, an auxiliary organisation in Australia during the Second World War, was formed in September of 1938.
Based in Brisbane, Queensland, only women of British origin were allowed to join.
Article from The Morning Bulletin. Rockhampton. 18 November 1938.
Women considered eligible were provided with training in areas considered necessary to the war effort, such as first aid and truck driving.
Miss Tony Mitchell at Somerville House in Brisbane, 1942. Mitchell drove cars and trucks for the US Army. X
When war broke out in the Pacific at the end of 1941 women were attached to US military units to work as drivers and clerks. They also worked for British and Dutch units based in Australia.
The organisation ceased operations a couple of years after the end of the war.
Smoko time with the AWLA
Inspired by Britain’s Women’s Land Army, the Australian Women’s Land Army was created on the 27th of July, 1942. The organisation was formed to combat shortages in the farming industry as the Second World War intensified.
Though Australia had been fighting in the war since 1939, once Japan entered the conflict in 1941, threatening the Pacific, many Australian men were drafted into the army, leaving shortages at home.
Field Officer Mrs Mellor ties a papier-mâché cow used in milking demonstrations to the back of her car in Melbourne. 1944.
Women who joined the AWLA took over men’s jobs in the agricultural sector. In order to be eligible for the work women were required to be between eighteen and fifty, and to be either of British origin or to be from a member of the Allied nations.
Women were paid significantly less than men for the same work.
The AWLA was disbanded on the 31st of December, 1945.
From the collection of the Australian War Memorial, Canberra.
This image, dated the 14th of March, 1942, shows a train of soldiers of the 7th Division being welcomed home by women and children in the suburbs of Adelaide, South Australia. They had just disembarked from His Majesty’s Transport Orcades and were returning from fighting in the Middle East.
This division of the Australian Army was formed in February of 1940, as part of the Second Australian Imperial Force in the Second World War.
In Times Gone By... 