I stumbled upon this brilliant image whilst browsing the IWM collection, looking for images of Coastal Command.
Piecing together to the story from the other images in the set, it appears that five of these Tea Cars were donated by the “peoples of America” to work on Coastal Command stations. The captions name a Mr Krauger as the representative of, I assume, the British War Relief Society (BWRS).
The BWRS were a channel, through which the United States could send non-military, humanitarian aid to Great Britain during the early years of the Second World War1.
I have a great interest in Coastal Command due to their presence at my local wartime Airfield of RAF Beaulieu. I would be very surprised if one of these, or similar cars wasn’t stationed there.
ROYAL AIR FORCE 1939-1945: COASTAL COMMAND (CH 4110) Time for Tea. The Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief of Coastal Command, Air Chief Marshal Sir Philip Joubert (far right), enjoys a ‘cuppa’ with some of his pilots from a YMCA tea car, supplied by the British War Relief Society in America, 8 December 1941. The officer in the middle is an American pilot.
Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205218927
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_War_Relief_Society#:~:text=The%20British%20War%20Relief%20Society,of%20the%20Second%20World%20War.