From the archive

8 October 1941

A TEENAGE boy makes model aeroplanes out of balsa wood while his father looks on approvingly, smoking his pipe. Two years into the Secondfeature. ‘Hearing that on a recent Sunday afternoon sergeants of the Guards were going to give girls between the ages of 14 and 18 their first taste of drill (in the preparation they are to receive before they join one of the services) I wandered onto the barrack square to see the fun, and was not disappointed,’ he told readers. ‘The girls were keen as mustard and took the matter very seriously. The big laugh came when an agency photographer tried to pose one of the sergeants with his mouth open, as if shouting an order at the scared girls; well it did not register as the sergeant was not that sort, and the result was anything but fierce-looking.’