I have been trying to get these items for some time and have only just been able to find them. I could only find a Region 1 version of the film but fortunately my DVD player is multi regional.

The title was penned by the author, John Maxwell Edmonds in The Times 6 February 1918, page 7, headed “Four Epitaphs” composed for graves and memorials to those fallen in battle – each covering different situations of death. The second of these was used as a theme for the 1942 war movie Went the Day Well?:

Went the day well?
We died and never knew.
But, well or ill,
Freedom, we died for you.

The film reinforced the message that civilians should be vigilant against fifth columnists and that “careless talk costs lives”. By the time the film was released the threat of invasion had subsided somewhat, but it was still seen as an effective piece of propaganda, and its reputation has grown over the years. It has been noted that by opening and closing in a predicted future where not only had the war been won but a (fictitious) full-scale German invasion of Britain defeated, and by presenting a scenario where all echelons of British society unite for the common good (the lady of the manor sacrifices herself without hesitation, for example), the film’s message was morale-boosting and positive rather than scaremongering. Anthony Quinn, a film critic for The Independent on Sunday, commented in 2010: “It subtly captures an immemorial quality of English rural life—the church, the local gossip, the sense of community—and that streak of native ‘pluck’ that people believed would see off Hitler”. Wikipedia

In 2005 it was named as one of the “100 Greatest War Films” in a poll by Britain’s Channel 4. The 1975 book, The Eagle Has Landed, and the later film use some of the same ideas.

The story is told in a series of flashbacks by a local villager from Bramley End during World War 2. Some British soldiers arrive in the town and are welcomed by the villagers for livening up their humdrum existence. All, however, is not as it seems.

If you have not seen it I will not spoil it for you.

Suffice to say that it is full of interesting yarns that could generate many a Very British Civil War (1938) scenario, including armed Land Girls, a fiery priest, bungling telephonists, a treacherous squire, home guard and a fair amount of good old British pluck!

Which brings me to this:

I do not intend to write a review as Neil Shuck on his podcast “Meeples and Miniatures” has done a far better job than I could. I can say that we are both in agreement that these are a great set of rules for a niche period and capture the flavour very well.

I can recommend both the rules and the DVD if you are interested in this period or even the WW2 hypothetical Sea Lion invasion.

As you can see the invasion was successful and we continue to see the impacts until this day!