The earliest WWII "re-enactors" ...
These guys have got to be just about the earliest WWII re-enactors in the world!
These photos were among my father's WWII RCAF service memorabilia - (he is not in the pictures, since he was the photographer.) They were taken when he was stationed at RCAF Station Bella Bella - away up the British Columbia coast, in the middle of nowhere - the only ways to get in there were by sea or air. It was a coastal patrol station, so things got mighty boring for the guys stationed there. On this occasion, though they may have had patrol duties or the like, they were obviously "playing soldier" - to relieve the boredom, or to have some snapshots to send home, or something like that. (To put them into a specific timeframe, I just pulled out his WWII service records - he was posted at Bella Bella from 17 February 1943 through 18 May 1944.)
Anyway, I've always thought the images were pretty cool ...
Obviously having fun "playing the role" ... though their grasp of proper deployment seems rather poor ...
"The Bridgehead" ...
"Smoke 'em if ya got 'em ..."
My parents were married during the war - this is the closest they had to a wedding portrait -
What the heck, while I'm at it, here is my dad at the age of about 10 or 11, circa 1917/1918 ... a mite too young to go overseas, but ....