‘Welcome Home … Darling’ (1941)

Welcome Home … Darling 1941

An imaginative and poignant cartoon of how Des sees the future outside world on their eventual release. ‘Tele-radio news’ displayed on futuristic buildings, flying cars with swept wings, towers connected by aerial bridges….all suggesting that Des was expecting a long stay as a guest of the Japanese conquerors. In reality, clandestine  news was reaching the POWs that all was not going well for the Axis powers, and as Des points out in his ‘Reflections of life as a POW’, they never lost faith in their eventual release and victory for the Allied powers

Inspired by the 1927 Science Fiction Movie ‘Metropolis’? We will never know but some scenes are familiar. Similarities can be seen in this modern clip, using some scenes from the original movie. Freddie Mercury has used this film for his recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUwakwHrVEo

‘In order to cope, I believe, most men surrounded themselves in their own personal and protective armour. Mine, as I have already written, was work, an almost obsessive sense of duty; for others it was humour or religious faith; and for nearly all of us, it was the setting of a deadline: ‘home by Christmas’ or ‘home for my wife’s birthday, or some other date of personal significance. In establishing a mental goal to work towards we were focussing on a future life which we could anticipate living and, in the process, attempt to reject the reality of what we were experiencing, deferring our disappointment. Keeping an ‘end point’ in mind, even though deep down we know it was artificial, gave us hope – one of the most powerful weapons in the limited armoury of defence we could own. If we were to not only survive but also remain sane, it was all we could do. ‘

Source: A Doctors War, by Dr Rowley Richards, pg 157, Harper Collins Publishers, 2006.