Soldiers letting their girlfriends play with a machine gun? No, not really. We offer this photo as another example of our archival detective work. The only identification on the photo was the date December 14, 1940, stamped on the back. The women’s hair styles and soldiers’ uniforms were of that period, and the 44th Division patch, half of which is visible on the shoulder of the soldier on the right, indicated that these were probably men of the New Jersey National Guard who had been called to one year’s active service at Fort Dix in September, 1940.
That left the identification of the “machine gun.” Was it a “training aid?” Not likely. Trustee Duncan MacQueen suggested that it was an arcade game of some sort, and that made sense. A subsequent web search revealed the website of an advanced collector of antique arcade games and an email request to him resulted in a positive identification. It was a “Keeney’s Antiaircraft Machine Gun” game, introduced in 1939, which fit our overall hypothesis. Although these games were popular in boardwalk arcades along the New Jersey Shore, the background did not suggest such a location. It seemed more likely that the photo was shot in a soldiers’ club on Fort Dix.
For more photos and stories like this, see the National Guard Militia Museum of New Jersey Facebook Page.
