GREAT BRITAIN CAN STILL LAUGH IT OFF

Auckland Star, Volume LXXII, Issue 229, 27 September 1941, Page 13

GREAT BRITAIN CAN STILL LAUGH IT OFF

W " a S™ m business, and it would certainly gag most of us if it were not for the happy fact that the national sense of humour comes to our rescue. But there is more to it than just a general sharpening of the com- ! munity funny bone; individually we become more ready to crack jokes, as well as more appreciative of others* jokes.

By Charles Clay

(This may seem an eccentric state of affairs when war is such a horrible experience; we should laugh e l less inster.d of more. Yet there is a j psychological basis to it. Laughter $t is a type of "defence mechanism." 9 As Kobold Knight assures us. "a a sense of humour is like Medea's j magic ointment, which quickly heals n every wound and renders one immune." Few things assuage bure dened minds as much as hearty c laughter; a person without a sens o n °£. humour is without one strong , shield against the batterings of ou° a raged fortune. i. Nonsense is Nourishing !. In this respect the British peopie '- ™,' e P er haps the best armoured There may be jokes in Berlin and Rome; but they are as funeral psalms e compared to the salubrious stuff an.i a nourishing nonsense dished up m London by the whimsy artists of the • nation. And the saints be praised for that! i Humour is an intangible but sto it defence in war. \Ye may expect !o endure the hardships and the horrors of conflict longer and with as spiritual casualty if we have a joke ni or two to take refuge in. The lilt of : laughter, even sad laughter, is invaluable. ;n There are four kinds of British war humour: First, there is the work of the jokesmiths, who either concoct war jokes out of whole cloth, as ar the saj r ing is, or who seize upon war ss incidents and "tailor" them into fullm fledged anecdotes. , Then there are actual unconsciously droll incidents that happen ie and circulate as war stories in theiIV own right. Thirdly, there are funny ie remarks made during moments of excitement. And. finally, there are ie the inimitable British placards and ig notices taking humorous advantage of of wartime conditions. f

2 The "Army" Brand 5S Look first at samples of the jokesmiths' art. One of their best "whole cloth" jokes is about a young sertd geant who asked the sergeant-major is for advice in framing a charge for )V which there was no example in J King's Regulations: ie "What was the man doiny. ig exactly?" asked the sergeant-majo<\ ' s "Flirting with a girl in the park, id sir " "Well." said the sergeant-major "• solemnly, "charge him with imper•n sonating an officer." r e Another "whole cloth" wartime joke is an adaptation of an old favourite: le Office Boy: Please, sir, could I e have to-morrow afternoon off? Employer: Your grandmother, I e suppose? n Office Boy: Exactly, sir. She's s, making her first parachute jump. , s Look next at "tailored" jokes, that e is war incidents that have been seized upon by the whimsy artists and turned into full-fledged anec- - dotes. For instance, there is the one about the British pilot who got lost fc and landed at Curragh. in Kildare. Growled the tough Irish sergeant ) who greeted him: "'Twould fit ye better to thank God you're not a dead man, for a corpse ye'd surely h be, landing like this without warn-

ing, only for our anti-aircraft gun after going to Dublin for repa because young Mick here jammed blazing into a flocß of wild gee; that came overhead last Saturd; night." Then there is the "tailored" jol about the young officer returnix from leave abroad. He was ju about to take his place in an a liner when a girl ran up and ask< the passengers if any-one of the would be kind enough to sell h< their seat, as her mother was da gerously ill and the liner was full u The young officer gave up his se; and wired his CO.: "Given berth i girl. Returning by next plane." Tr reply he received ran: "Congratul tions. Your next confinement will I m barracks." These jokes, and literally hui tlreds more like them, circulatir among Britain's civilian and mil-tar are a powerful benisoi , hey cheer and enliven spirit There is no doubt that thev ha\ been in large part responsible" for tfc British ability "to take it." Family with such conscious drollery, tr. British become unconsciously droll A zealous A.R.P. warden, during blackout, saw the lighthouse o Barra Head going about its busine* of illuminating nearlv a hundre square miles of ocean. That t course, was right and proper, an the warden nodded with satisfa. turn: ships at sea had to be guide from the shoals, blackout or n blackout. And then the warden suddenl stiffened. What did he see . With resounding oath he rushed down t the shore, commandeered a boat an plunged through the waves toward the lighthouse. Coming within hai ing distance, he bawled out throug a megaphone. Caught in the Blackout The keeper thrust his head ove the rim of the towering structure ■.Man shouted the warden, "don' you know this is a blackout an< bumL e fggßfP 1 to puH your wta * w A second engineer serving on ; trawler during the evacuation o troops from Namsos left his engin. room and went on deck during ; fierce Nazi bomb attack on his ship He thought he could be of more u» up top than down below. He was H» did tremendous work carrying am munition to the trawler's one ami aircraft gun. And as he trotted ffon shell box to gun, reckless of th< bombs falling all around his ship the second engineer sang "Pennie< From Heaven."

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A bomb dropped in a south England river and a local angler exclaimed indignantJv: "This will upset tie fish for weeks." Said a British commercial traveller, throwing napkin angrily on the table in a south-east town restaurant: "I don t mind these raids, but I wish to eoori£?y.wouldn't come at lunch time. It's just thoughtless!" i,.?^-^ 056 British ers can "take it. With a sense of humour second to none in the world, they are stoulh and impregnably armoured. And nowhere is their drollerv more in evidence than in their placarding It has become a new wartime art each trying to outdo his neighbour in laugh-producing .signs. A Dover rooming house proprietor puts a card in his window as <;oon a s a vacancy occurs. The card invariably reads: "Nice rooms with every convenience. facing the enemy." A placard in a uublic building in one of the raided suburb* of London used to read: "Don't worrv it may never happen." After a verv Sharp attack the placard reappeared with a slight change: '-Don't worrv Hitler has missed us again." Tmrmei To Good Account But the prize for seizing upon the exigencies of war and whirnsicallv turning them to good account came from a London flower seller fo l lowing the British anti-rumour campaign. This stout-hearted Jady put up a placard over her posies It read: "Don't talk in your sleep, there may be a jerry under your bed. Sav it \yith fiowers, instead." No wonder an old man. placidlv painting his house during an air raid mildly replied when told to come clown to safety: "Bombs? I thought it was the wind shaking my ladder , ' . No wonder when the blushing bride said I do" during a violent raid on London which did not interrupt the marriage ceremony, the bridegroom grinned and remarked: "This is a good start!" Xo wonder a certain English lady in her very late seventies, receiving e cable from an American friend suggesting she visit the United States for the duration," promptly replied: Hearty thanks charming invitation hope to accept when ultimate victorv u> secured. , " _ There is something tremendously inspiring in such high-spiritednes's m the face of an implacable enemy. Simple, spontaneous, stirring, these reactions to disaster and death prove above all things that the British have J resilience that will be hard, if not impossible, to snap. Their national sense of humour is their most powerful defence.