How To Play Golf While The Nazis Are Dropping Bombs On You

A classic (well, new to me, but classic to many) set of rules is making its rounds again today. In 1940, the Richmond Golf Club, which lies about ten miles outside of central London, was prone to damage from German bombing runs. In response, club officials drafted this temporary set of seven rules:

1. Players are asked to collect Bomb and Shrapnel splinters to save these causing damage to the mowing machines.
2. In competitions, during gunfire, or while bombs are falling, players may take cover without penalty for ceasing play.
3. The positions of known delayed-action bombs are marked by red flags placed at reasonably, but not guaranteed safe distance therefrom.
4. Shrapnel/and/or bomb splinters on the Fairways, or in Bunkers within a club’s length of a ball may be moved without penalty, and no penalty shall be incurred if a ball is thereby caused to move accidentally.
5. A ball moved by enemy action may be replaced, or if lost or destroyed, a ball may be dropped not nearer the hole without penalty.
6. A ball lying in a crater may be lifted and dropped not nearer the hole, preserving the line to the hole without penalty.
7. A player whose stroke is affected by the simultaneous explosion of a bomb may play another ball from the same place. Penalty, one stroke.

I was worried that some Internet person made this up until I found the same set of rules buried in the Richmond Golf Club’s official website, which also documents the Nazis’ amusing response to the rules:

Dr Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, used the Club’s Temporary Rules as the theme of a broadcast by William (Lord Haw-Haw) Joyce: “By means of these ridiculous reforms the English snobs try to impress the people with a kind of pretended heroism. They can do so without danger, because, as everyone knows, the German Air Force devotes itself only to the destruction of military targets and objectives of importance to the war effort.”

That’s... actually a pretty good (if fallacious) comeback. Oh God, did I just compliment a Nazi? Gross.