[Five drawings. by (SIEGFRIED LINE).

Five drawings (largest 340 × 220 mm, smallest 215 × 140 mm), four in pencil one in ink and watercolour, three on thick cartidge paper, one on tracing paper, once on fine smooth paper. Slightly dusty, pin holes to some corners, light creasing.

Five drawings from the early stages of the Second World War, presumably for commercial publication in France, of which four are on the theme of the song ‘We’re Going to Hang out the Washing on the Siegfried Line’ by Irish songwriter Jimmy Kennedy, written whilst he was a Captain in the British Expeditionary Force during the early stages of the Second World War. The defensive Siegfried Line was constructed by Germany in the 1930s, opposite the French Maginot Line but was widely ridiculed by the Allies in the opening year of the war who threatened to treat the defence as no more than a clothes line. The popular sentiment expressed in the song is extended in these French cartoon drawings in which the Amercian, British Union Jack and French Tricolor are pegged out on the line. One of the sketches shows a young soldier in uniform hugged by his wife and children in a typical enlistment scene.