Vital Statistics

> Parliamentary Secretary to the British Ministry of Home Security Ellen Wilkinson announced last week that since the war began 28,859 people had been killed and 40,165 seriously wounded in Britain as a result of bombings. "The number of soldiers killed in air raids is about one-fiftieth of that total."

> To quench the growing demand for reprisals against Germany in kind, the British Air Ministry announced that although it had confined its bombing to military objectives, many bombed factories were in densely populated districts where German civilians had inevitably been casualties, that according to "unimpeachable stories smuggled out of the Reich," 1,000 had been killed and 7,000 injured by R.A.F. raids on the city of Bremen alone, that in Berlin many had perished due to the collapse of cellars used as air-raid shelters.

>Britain's Parliamentary Under Secretary for War Brigadier General Lord Croft announced to the House of Lords that in the fighting in Africa, Britain had lost only 2,966 men, of whom only 604 were killed, against 200,000 Italian casualties (including 180,000 prisoners).

> During the first year of the war, marriages in England and Wales were up 25% even over the year before, which had a huge rush of pre-war marriages.

> The birth rate was down about 8%, will probably continue low for a time. Reasons: winter before last the Army was in France ; last summer much of the population spent their nights in the unromantic publicity of air-raid shelters. But people are finding other places and times for making love, and British doctors are amazed at how the war has seemed to promote fertility.

> Many girls join the uniformed services because they provide the best means of finding male company. Some are evidently bent on marriage. Others enjoy the opportunity of keeping company with many men. It was rumored that 25 pregnant girls in the W.A.A.F. all named one R.A.F. man as the father of their expected children.

> Since the British Army does not officially control or supervise prostitution, Army camps all over the island are a happy hunting ground for professionals and patriotic amateurs. The pubs around Army camps are filled with these and with wives following their husbands.

> Troops from overseas had the edge on the Tommies in the competition for local girls, particularly Canadians with their high pay. The feud between one Scots I regiment and a Polish one quartered near by is so bitter that Highland privates have taken to socking Polish officers, are only "warned" by courts-martial.

> The British Army equivalent of "Hiya, Babe?", heard as often on Piccadilly as it is on side streets: "Turned out nice again!"

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