1943 Fifty Years Ago

While a blood shortage continued at the front and a domestic bronze shortage was making many servicemen wait for their newly won Purple Hearts and other medals, the war correspondent Ernie PyIe reported a new type of scarcity: In emergencies, many fighting troops lived exclusively on D rations of chocolate. They were eating so many chocolate bars, in fact, that the Nestlé company proudly took out an ad explaining the shortage of this “fighting food” in the States. “Serving our fighting men comes first,” cautioned the company’s ad writers, “but Nestlé’s Chocolate Bars may still be found in limited quantities on your dealer’s shelves.”

Dogs for Defense

In New York City, eighteen cases of dogs eating their own tags were reported in early October; the new tags were made of soybeans instead of the less appealing hard rubber, which had become scarce.