"Government Housewives". Sewing, sewing and seamstresses.

American soldier in Cuba in 1898 doing a sewing repair.

We posted this the other day:

Lex Anteinternet: Sunday, December 10, 1922. War Surplus.: Rather, I posted it for this big war surplus store advertisement on page 2.  This is the earliest example of this I've seen.

Surplus stores were a feature of my childhood and even young adult years in a major way.  The "War Surplus Store" on 1st Street, on the Sandbar, was a somewhat disorganized collection of stuff guaranteed to fascinate a boy for as long as the boy's parents would allow him to wonder around in it, full of stuff dating back to World War Two.  It's now closed, of course, and instead is the outdoor clothing store Gear Up.

That wasn't Casper's last surplus store, however.  Yates, outside of town, fit that description, and was again fascinating.  It probably closed fifteen or so years ago when its owner relocated to Australian with his Australian wife, figuring that, even as a younger man, that with his savings and Australian social services, he'd no longer have to work.

I hope that worked out.

Laramie had a really small surplus store when I first lived there, but it closed while I lived there in the 80s.  Examples still exist, however.  Jax in Ft. Collins keeps on keeping on, although that's only a small part of its large collection of wares, and Billings retains a good surplus store to this day.

This location is a parking lot today:

A sharp-eyed person (not me) noticed the item about "Government Housewives".

What on earth was that?

It turns out to be a sewing kit issued to soldiers.¹

That reveals a set of interesting things.

First of all, sewing repairs were regarded as "women's work".  I frankly don't know, to the extent that anyone does them today, that they still aren't.

I know how to sew for repairs and minor matters.  My mother taught me, and from a young age if buttons needed to be put on my clothes, I did it.  My father knew how to sew as well.  And I'd note that from a military prospective, soldiers had to know how to sew.  I was single while a Guardsman and all the badges, etc., that went on my uniform were put there by me, and they had to be right.

I suspect that the ability to do this was common knowledge while it also being the case that, if women could do it, in the divided labor system that predated the 1970s, they mostly did.

Sixteen-year-old Boston seamstress Helen Anderson, 1917.  She was employed in a commercial shop at this early age.  The good old days.

My mother also knew how to darn socks, which is something that nobody does now, and how to make clothing via a pattern on a sewing machine.  She always had a good sewing machine.  When she died, as I don't know how to use a sewing machine, I gave it to my mother-in-law, who is an excellent seamstress.  The interesting thing here is that my mother gave up making dresses, which is what she had done for herself at one time, when I was pretty young.  My mother-in-law used to make shirts for my father-in-law, but hasn't done that for quite some time.

When I was young this sort of work, seamstress work, was something associated with women.  Now it's practically simply a lost art, by my observation.  When my kids received letters in high school athletics, I had to hunt high and low to find somebody to put the letters on.  I did, but interestingly the woman who did it was a Mexican immigrant, and likely learned the craft in her native country.

When I had to have a zipper installed on my Carhartt coat, which of course indicates that I'm too cheap to replace a coat that's otherwise serviceable but which has a broken zipper, I had a canvass shop here in town do it for me.

That's interesting for a couple of reasons, one being is that I had to think outside the box to get the repair done.  My mother's sewing basket had zippers in it, which means that she was making that repair from time to time. That's beyond me, quite frankly.

I learned that it's beyond me as I tried to find a zipper for a pair of  Army field pants.  I like field pants, which are pants that go over other pants, although I usually just press Army trousers into that role. Somewhere I found a pair of genuine field pants of the old OD type and bought them.  But the zipper is shot. It probably broke when the trousers were new, as they're nearly new.  I thought I could replace it, but finding the right size zipper has been a chore.  It didn't use to be.

Anyhow, I don't know how many clothing repairs people actually make anymore.  Fewer than they used to.

Another sewing occupation, that of tailor, seemed to be a male job.  When I was first practicing law, there was an elderly tailor here in town with a small shop right next to the Federal Courthouse.  Now, that's closed and given his age, 30 years ago, he's almost certainly passed on. With the closure of the shop, the craft here closed with him.

Isidore Rubinoff, 1943, tailor for a Greyhound bus lines garage. Greyhound kept a series of such shops in an era when formal dressing was more important than it now is.  Rubinoff is wearing a Greyhound tie chain.

The degree to which people had clothing tailored has changed enormously.

It's not as if I frequented tailors at one time, to any great degree, but it did used to be the case that if you bought a good suit, it probably received some "alterations" to fit just right.  That was the difference between going into a good men's shop and buying a suit and getting one "off the rack".  An "off the rack" suit isn't going to fit quite right. There's a real difference.

Places like Brook's Brothers had tailors working in the stores.  Now, it tends to be the case that somebody will take your measurements, and it'll be shipped off somewhere.  And this with suits.

Even into the 1970s, as odd as it may seem now, tailoring was so common that even enlisted soldiers used to have Class B and fatigue uniforms tailored on occasion.  Not all by any means, but quite a few.  I recall my uncle noting that about his induction cycle in 1958, noting that a lot of the same soldiers couldn't fit in those uniforms several months later, as the physical activity of basic training passed away.  I don't know when this became a thing of the past for the Army, but it nearly, but not completely, was when I was a Guardsman in the 1980s.  It was more common in the Marine Corps.  I'll bet it's gone nearly completely now.

So here we have an interesting trend, or rather several trends.  

And one of them again has to do with the division of labor.  Back in an era when clothes were more expensive, mending them was more common, and while both sexes did it, it fell more to women than men.  This wasn't part of the "patrimony", it had to do with the tightness of resources.

But more than that was going on, and to we really need to take a look back even further to really appreciate the change.

Which we'll do next. . . 

Footnotes:

1. Apparently they were still issued into the 1970s, although by that time they'd required an off color nickname.

Related threads:

When resources were tight

Friday, December 1, 1922. Environment.

Protesters took advantage of the Thanksgiving Holiday to picket the White House regarding those held under sedition charges.

At the Conference of Lausanne, the Turks informed European delegates that Greeks remaining in Eastern Thrace had two weeks to leave.  They numbered 1,000,000.

Monica Cobb appeared at the Birmingham Assizes, acting in the role of a prosecutor.  It was the first appearance by a woman solicitor in court in the United Kingdom. The defendant was charged with bigamy.

A safety parade took place in Washington, D.C., viewed by President Harding.

 

Environment, a silet move about the trials of a female ex con, was released:

Friday, November 25, 1922. Trotting Turkey

Country Gentleman came out with a Thanksgiving themed cover by illustrator Frederick Lowenheim.

In France, for St. Catherine's saint's day, the Catherinettes were out on the streets:

From John Blackwell's Twitter feed on the topic.

We noted this custom in 2020:

The day is also St. Catherine's Day,, the feast day for that saint, which at the time was still celebrated in France as a day for unmarried women who had obtained twenty-five years of age.  Such women were known as Catherinettes. Women in general were committed since the Middle Ages to the protection of St. Catherine and on this day large crowds of unmarried 25 year old women wearing hats to mark their 25th year would gather for a celebration of sorts, where well wishers would wish them a speedy end to their single status. The custom remained strong at least until the 1930s but has since died out.

We should also note that the plight of unmarried French women, and British ones as well (and probably German ones) had grown worse since 1914.  Due to the combat losses of young men in the Great War, their marriage prospects in an era when being an unmarried woman was somewhat grim, had greatly declined.  The youngest of these women had been 21 when the war ended, meaning that they were of marriageable age when most young men were fighting in the war.  As the war killed men in that demographic, it meant that some would never marry.  The war also meant that the surviving men had disproportionate options.

I'm sure there's a study of this somewhere, but it can't help be noted that it must have had long-lasting social impacts, and it probably also explains the significant number of "war brides" brought home from France by US servicemen after the war and occupation, as well as the same population brining home some German brides, and Russian brides.

The Italian Chamber of Deputies granted Mussolini full power over economic matters for a year.

On the Rebel Streets of Cork. . . 

Saturday, November 18, 1922. Sanctuary

The USNS Sanctuary was recommissioned and became, at the same time, the first U.S. Navy ship with a mixed male/female company.

The hospital ship had entered service originally in 1944 and served in that war, as well as the Korean and Vietnam Wars.  It was decommissioned and commissioned three times during its service before being finally decommissioned in 1975.  She was sold for scrap in 2011.

Blog Mirror: Lessons from the 1940s – No Complaints

Lessons from the 1940s – No Complaints: They waded ashore in chest-deep water in Algeria and took shelter behind sand dunes. Snipers and strafing fighter planes aimed for them. And they were women.

Worth reading. 

November 10, 1942. The end of the beginning.

Admiral Darlan agreed to a ceasefire in French North Africa.

On the same day, Oran in Algeria surrendered to the Allies.  U.S. forces captured Porty Lyautey.

Following Darlan's declaration, the Germans launched Case Anton and occupied Vichy France, an operation which Italy particpated in. This ended Vichy's autonomy.  Darlan, in turn, declared that this move released him from any requirements of loyalty to Vichy and pleged cooperation with the Allies, with the condition that he be appointed French high commissioner for French North Africa.  While a hgly legalistic approach to thins, it 

Churchill used the occasion to give a speech which characteristically defined events with one of his most famous phrases of the war.

I notice, my Lord Mayor, by your speech you have reached the conclusion that news from the various fronts has been somewhat better lately.

In our wars, episodes are largely adverse but the final result has hitherto been satisfactory. Eddies swirl around us, but the tide bears us forward on its broad, restless flood.

In the last war we were uphill almost to the end. We met with continual disappointments and with disasters far more bloody than anything we have experienced so far in this. But in the end all oppositions fell together and our foes submitted themselves to our will.

We have not so far in this war taken as many German prisoners as they have taken British, but these German prisoners will, no doubt, come in in droves at the end, just as they did last time.

I have never promised anything but blood, tears, toil and sweat. Now, however, we have a new experience. We have victory-a remarkable and definite victory. The bright gleam has caught the helmets of our soldiers and warmed and cheered all our hearts.

The late M. Venizelos observed that in all her wars England-he should have said Britain, of course-always won one battle, the last. It would seem to have begun rather earlier this time.

General Alexander, with his brilliant comrade and lieutenant, General Montgomery, has made a glorious and decisive victory in what I think should be called the Battle of Egypt. Rommel's army has been defeated. It has been routed. It has been very largely destroyed as a fighting force.

This battle was not fought for the sake of gaining positions or so many square miles of desert territory. General Alexander and General Montgomery fought it with one single idea-to destroy the armed forces of the enemy and to destroy them at a place where the disaster would be most punishable and irrevocable.

All the various elements in our lines of battle played their part. Indian troops, Fighting French, Greeks, representatives of Czechoslovakia and others. Americans rendered powerful and invaluable service in the air. But as it happened, as the course of battle turned, it has been fought throughout almost entirely by men of British blood and from the dominions on the one side and by Germans on the other. The Italians were left to perish in the waterless desert. But the fighting between the British and Germans was intense and fierce in the extreme.

It was a deadly battle. The Germans have been outmatched and outfought with every kind of weapon with which they had beaten down so many small peoples and, also, larger, unprepared peoples. They have been beaten by many of the technical apparatus on which they counted to gain domination of the world. Especially is this true in the air, as of tanks and of artillery, which has come back into its own. The Germans have received that measure of fire and steel which they have so often meted out to others.

Now, this is not the end. It is not even the beginning to the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

Hitler's Nazis will be equally well armed and, perhaps, better armed. But henceforward they will have to face in many theatres that superiority in the air which they have so often used without mercy against others and of which they boasted all around the world that they were to be masters and which they intended to use as an instrument for convincing all other peoples that all resistance to them was hopeless.

When I read of the coastal road crammed with fleeing German vehicles under the blasting attacks of the R. A. F., I could not but remember those roads of France and Flanders crowded not with fighting men, but with helpless refugees, women and children, fleeing with their pitiful barrows and household goods upon whom such merciless havoc was wreaked. I have, I trust, a humane disposition, but I must say I could not help feeling that whatever was happening, however grievous, was only justice grimly repaid.

It will be my duty in the near future to give a particular and full account of these operations. All I say about them at present is that the victory which has already been gained gives good prospects of becoming decisive and final, so far as the defense of Egypt is concerned.

But this Battle of Egypt, in itself so important, was designed and timed as a prelude and a counterpart of the momentous enterprise undertaken by the United States at the western end of the Mediterranean, an enterprise under United States command and in which our army, air force and, above all, our navy are bearing an honorable and important share. A very full account has bee published of all that has been happening in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia.

The President of the United States, who is Commander in Chief of the armed forces of America, is the author of this might undertaking and in all of it I have been his active and ardent lieutenant.

You have, no doubt, read the declaration of President Roosevelt, solemnly endorsed by His Majesty's Government, of the strict respect which will be paid to the rights and interests of Spain and Portugal, both by America and Great Britain.

To those countries, our only policy is that they shall be independent and free, prosperous and at peace. Britain and the United States will do all that we can to enrich the economic life of the Iberian Peninsula. The Spaniards, especially, with all their troubles, require and deserve peace and recuperation.

Our thoughts turn toward France, groaning in bondage under the German heel. Many ask themselves the question: Is France finished? Is that long and famous history, marked by so many manifestations of genius, bearing with it so much that is precious to culture, to civilization and, above all, to the liberties of mankind-is all that now to sink forever into the ocean of the past or will France rise again and resume her rightful place in the structure of what may one day be again the family of Europe?

I gladly say here, on this considerable occasion, even now when misguided or suborned Frenchmen are firing upon their rescuers, that I am prepared to stake my faith that France will rise again.

While there are men like General De Gaulle and all those who follow him-and they are legion throughout France-and men like General Giraud, that gallant warrior whom no prison can hold, while there are men like that to stand forward in the name and in the cause of France my confidence in the future of France is sure.

For ourselves we have no wish but to see France free and strong, with her empire gathered round her and with Alsace-Lorraine restored. We covet no French possession. We have no acquisitive designs or ambitions in North Africa or any other part of the world. We have not entered this war for profit or expansion but only for honor and to do our duty in defending the right.

Let me, however, make this clear, in case there should be any mistake about it in any quarter: we mean to hold our own. I have not become the King's First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire. For that task, if ever it were prescribed, some one else would have to be found, and under a democracy I suppose the nation would have to be consulted.

I am proud to be a member of that vast commonwealth and society of nations and communities gathered in and around the ancient British monarchy, without which the good cause might well have perished from the face of the earth.

Here we are and here we stand, a veritable rock of salvation in this drifting world. There was a time not long ago when for a whole year we stood all alone. Those days, thank God, have gone.

We now move forward in a great and gallant company. For our record we have nothing to fear. We have no need to make excuses or apologies. Our record pleads for us and we shall get gratitude in the breasts of every man and woman in every part of the world.

As I have said, in this war we have no territorial aims. We desire no commercial favors, we wish to alter no sovereignty or frontier for our own benefit.

We have come into North Africa shoulder to shoulder with our American friends and allies for one purpose and one purpose only. Namely, to gain a vantage ground from which to open a n ew front against Hitler and Hitlerism, to cleanse the shores of Africa from the stain of Nazi and Fascist tyranny, to open the Mediterranean to Allied sea power and air power, and thus effect the liberation of the peoples of Europe from the pit of misery into which they have been passed by their own improvidence and by the brutal violence of the enemy.

These two African undertakings, in the east and in the west, were part of a single strategic and political conception which we had labored long to bring to fruition and about which we are now justified in entertaining good and reasonable confidence. Taken together they were a grand design, vast in its scope, honorable in its motive and noble in its aim.

British and American forces continue to prosper in the Mediterranean. The whole event will be a new bond between the English-speaking people and a new hope for the whole world.

I recall to you some lines of Byron which seem to me to fit event and theme:

"Millions of tongues record thee, and anew

Their children's lips shall echo them and say,

Here where sword the united nations drew

Our countrymen were warring on that day.

And this is much and all which will not pass away."

Somewhat oddly, this date was the date on which the movie Road To Morocco was released.

And there's this:

Women lumberjacks at the Northwestern Timber Salvage Administration’s lumber mill at Turkey Pond, N.H. get $4 a day, 11/10/1942. 

Thank you to NARA staff member Shannon Kerner for the document suggestion!

File Unit: [Women Operating Sawmill, Turkey Pond, New Hampshire], 1938 - 1943

Series: Records Relating to Timber Salvage, 1938 - 1943

Record Group 95: Records of the Forest Service, 1870 - 2022

Image description: Three women in heavy work clothes and kerchiefs over their hair carry a log on their shoulders. In the background is a pond filled with logs.

Source: catalog.archives.gov

Thursday, November 6, 1947. Meet The Press Premiers.

Meet The Press, the longest running television program in the United States, premiered in that format.  It had previously premiered on radio as American Mercury Presents:  Meet the Press on October 5, 1945.

While I very much favor This Week over Meet the Press, it occurs to me that somewhat ironically, as I listed to the audio podcast variant, I listed to it closer to the radio version.

The first guess for the then 30-minute Thursday night program was James Farley, the Postmaster General and DNC Committee chairman.  The initial moderator was Martha Roundtree, reprising her role from the radio variant, and the only woman moderator of the show to date.  Roundtree hosted the program until 1953.

She died in 1999 in Washington D.C., nearly blind since the 1980s, due to the harsh effects of primitive television lighting.

As noted, I do listen to it, but I'm not a fan of the current moderator, Chuck Todd.  Indeed, I was hoping for a second female moderator in the form of Kasi Hunt.

On the same day, Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov told a Moscow audience that the means of making an atomic weapons were no longer secret.  American intelligence took that to mean that the Soviet Union knew how to build a bomb, but didn't necessarily have one.  The Soviets, who had penetrated the American government fairly successfully, suspected that the US was working on such a weapon by 1942 and started their own project accordingly.  Nonetheless, they had not developed a bomb by this point themselves, but were only two years away from doing so.

Canada invited Newfoundland to join the Canadian Dominion.

Blog Mirror: "We keep you alive to serve this ship", Part 1 of societal institutions and work. - November 04, 2022

"We keep you alive to serve this ship"

Ben Hur

Just observing things, It's really struck me over time how certain social programs, of the left and the right, basically amount to nothing other than serving the needs of businesses, particularly large business entities, no matter how they are styled. This is so much the case that certain huge proponents of some programs who would regard themselves as real fire breathing leftists are actually heavy-duty capitalists, and don't know it.

This shows in their justification for the programs.

Let's, once again, make reference to our evolved place in a state of nature, and where we are actually at.

In a state of nature we'd not do what most of us do daily, which is to leave our abode and clock in time somewhere else, to come back to our home.  In our natural state, while we would leave our families, the family would be the focus all the time.  In our industrial societies, our work is.  Most people spend most of their lives with people they are brought in contact with solely because they serve an economic interest, and nothing else.

Men got there first, long before women. But starting in the early part of the 20th Century, if not slightly before, that changed for women and now women are basically expected to work away from their homes and families.

Everyone is.

When looked at this way, we see why left wing emphasis on child care, and paradoxically abortion, are part and parcel of serving industry.  If women can be prevented from having children, they can, ie., they'll have to, go to work. That's what they should be doing, working.  If they must have children for some weird biological and psychological reason, well then government sponsored child warehousing, i.e., daycare, will force them back into work in another fashion.

Either way, they'll be freed, i.e., forced, to serve work.

Almost all the post 1945 liberalization of domestic law and structure works this way.  Easy no-fault divorce makes it easy to dump families, sending everyone unhindered and untethered into work. Where that results in women falling below the poverty line due to their children, as they foolishly chose to have children, government funded daycare will address it.  Abortion must be kept legal, we are told, as it means women can go to work.

What if things didn't work this way?

Well, men would still be men, and women be women, but they'd have to fund their families themselves, and at least attempt to choose more wisely.  That would have a lot of collateral impacts, but chief among them would be, frankly, less of a focus on work and more of a focus on the domestic.

But that would also mean that a society based on consumption, and which reduced its members to consumers, would be focused on families instead.

And then who is going to make and buy all that crap?

So the next time you here Bernie Sanders spouting off about something like universal child care, remember, what he's really saying, whether he means it or not, is:

"We keep you alive to serve this ship"

Thursday, September 10, 1942. WAFS founded.

WAFS, 1943.

Today in World War II History—September 10, 1942: US forms WAFS (Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron) under Nancy Harkness Love for already-licensed pilots, a precursor to the WASP program.

From Sarah Sundin's blog.

The WAFS were civilians by regulation, not military pilots, and operated under ninety day contracts. They had to be licensed pilots with 200 hours of experience when they hired on, and while they wore uniforms, they had to buy them, although that was required of Army officers as well. Unlike officers, however, they had to pay for their own room and board as well.  There were only forty at the height of the program.

While they were required to have 200 hours of flight time, in reality the average for those signing on was 1,400 and a commercial pilots license. This made the WAFS not only quite experienced as pilots, in context, but unusual for female pilots.

Betty H. Gillies.

Betty H. Gillies was the first member, in that she was the first to report for training. She was an experienced pilot of fourteen years and married to the vice president of Grumman.

Saturday, August 29, 1942. The appearance of the Tiger 1.

The Panzerkampfwagen VI, famously known as the Tiger, or in this instance the Tiger I tank, made its battlefield appearance outside of Leningrad.  The Soviets were making a determined effort to relieve the city.

Captured Tiger 1 in U.S. possession.

The Tiger was a feared German weapon, and justifiably so.  Classified as a heavy tank, with much more armor than previous German tanks, and armed with an 88 mm main gun, it can be regarded as one of the first tanks, along with the T34, that pointed the way towards the Main Battle Tank of the post-war period, although that concept was still years away.  Indeed, it might be better able to claim the position of having essentially occupied that role prior to any other tank.

1,347 were made during the war.  Mechanically complicated due to over engineering, it had a high breakdown rate.  It was so feared by the Western Allies that troops routinely reported German tanks to be Tigers, no matter what they actually were.

On the same day the Soviet Air Force bombed Berlin in a nighttime raid using 100 Petlyakov Pe-8, Ilyshin II-4 and Yermolayev Yer 2 bombers.  A small party of Pe-8s bombed Königsberg.

The first class of officers for the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps graduated.

The Saturday Evening Post featured P38 Lightenings on its cover.

I failed to note the August 1, 1942, cover, which featured a cover illustration of a Marine in the newly adopted herringbone tweed cotton dungarees. The Marine in question is wearing the Marine's khaki summer shirt underneath his hbt jacket, and it was in fact a jacket.  It was rarely worn that way, however, typically being worn as simply a shirt.  He's also wearing the M1 helmet and carrying a M1903 Springfield, all of which was typical gear at this point in the war and all of which reflected the appearance of the average Marine going into Guadalcanal.

Worth noting, however, is that at this point the hbt uniform was so new the Marines only issued a single set to its men.  Marines landing at Guadalcanal had only one, that is, set of hbt dungarees.

The Red Cross announced that the Japanese had refused the free passage of ships carrying food and medicine to American POWs.

Poster Saturday: "Don't miss your great opportunity"

World War Two Navy WAVES recruiting poster that looks more like a college recruiting poster, or perhaps a travel poster.

This poster is really emblematic of the era in several ways.  The two young women have a very clean, 1940s appearance, with the large city behind them likewise having one.  Very much how the nation saw itself at the time.

Friday, July 17, 1942. End of the Archangle Route, Soviet female snipers, Combat at El Alamein, Case Blue resupplied from the air.

Churchill informed Stalin that in light of the PQ 17 disaster, convoys to Archangel would be suspended. Stalin already believed that the British were exaggerating about their losses.

It's worth noting, in my view, that Stalin's grasp, in my view, of the difficulties faced by the Western Allies tended to be clouded.  The Soviet Union was no more of a naval power than Imperial Russia had been, indeed considerably less so, and Stalin's ability to grasp the problems faced by the United States Navy and Royal Navy was not necessarily great.

Red Army sniper Lyudmila Pavlichenko and Roza Shanina appeared on the cover of Life Magazine.

Pavlichenko.

Pavlichenko, as her last name would indicate, was Ukrainian.  She was sent on a tour of the United States and Canada in 1942, where she was very blunt in her comments and found the questions asked of her by the press to sometimes be stupid.  Her husband died during the war, and she suffered from his loss and PTSD until her early death at age 58 in 1974.

Shanina

Shanina was a Russian from northwestern Russia.  Unlike Pavlichenko, she was highly photogenic and there are a great number of photos of her as a result, in which she is usally broadly smiling.

A bright, highly intelligent woman, she was killed in action in January 1945.

Shanina's death notice to her mother.

Australian and British forces at El Alamein attempted to take Miteirya Ridge, succeeded at first against Italian troops, but were later pushed back by combined German and Italian forces.

The Luftwaffe airlifts 200 tons of fuel to advancing German forces in Russia.  Hitler moved his headquarters to Werewolf, where he plans to personally oversee Case Blue.

Saturday, June 23, 1922. Portents.

The Saturday Evening Post hit the stands with an enduringly popular Leyendecker illustration.

Judge, which had recently combined with Leslie's, made fun of the cost of a dinner date.

Walther Rathenau, German Foreign Minster, was assassinated by right wing German nationalist.  Germany's march towards Nazism was commencing.

On the same day Hitler began serving his prison sentence.

The American Professional Football Association voted to change its name to the National Football League.

The English Ladies Football Association hold its only championship.

Japan announced it would withdraw its occupation forces from Siberia, save for Sakhalin Island, by the end of October.

Friday, May 15, 1942. WAACs formed.

A couple of big events in regard to the American war effort occurred on this day in 1942.

First one on the Home front.

Today In Wyoming's History: May 15: 1942   Gas rationing limits US motorist to 3 gallons per week, except for those in critical industries.

Three gallons per week. . . 12 gallons per month.

In actuality, it was limited to 17 Eastern states at first.

Gas rationing, by the way, was aimed in the US at reducing rubber tire wear more than conserving gasoline. The US remained a petroleum exporter at the time.  Sarah Sundin, however, reports on her blog that it came into effect in the East, when it did, due to U-boat shipping losses.

Second, the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps was created.

This replicated a move that had been done in World War One, but on a much larger, and ultimately permanent in an evolutionary sense.\

Sundin also reports that this is the date the U.S. dropped a red ball from its aircraft insignia, done in order to prevent U.S. aircraft from being mistaken as Japanese aircraft.

Costa Rica broke diplomatic relations with Hungary and Romania.

Slovakia legalized the deportation of Jews from their territory, following the trail of their German masters.

Saturday, April 25, 1942. Service, escape, internment and ANZAC Day.

Elizabeth Windsor, then also known as Princess Elizabeth, and now known as Queen Elizabeth II, registered for service.

The then Princess Elizabeth.

She would later, as we've addressed elsewhere, volunteer for service with the Auxiliary Territorial Service.

Also on this date the Germans announced a 100,000 Mark reward for the recapture of French general, Henri Giraud, who had escaped captivity.

Held in Germany after the French surrender, he meticulously planned his escape and made his way to Switzerland, and then into Vichy France, where the government refused to turn him over to the Germans.  The Germans ordered reprisals against his family and plotted to assassinate him.  Ultimately, he departed Vichy France at the start of Operation Torch to become a Free French figure.

US troops landed on New Caledonia to help defend it.

ANZAC Day was observed in Jerusalem.

The tragedy of Internment processing rolled on.