Water well and pump professionals, like my father, faced significant challenges during World War II and for several years after it ended. The workload was about normal, but military needs made both materials and help nearly impossible to find. Anyone who lived through those years or has read about them knows about rationing for basics like gasoline, tires, shoes and meat. Not as well-known is the rationing for steel pipe, pumps, tanks, valves and other parts that make up a water well system. Often, these items were not available.
Every town or city of any size had not only a draft board to provide people to the military, but a rationing or allocation board. (I may have the name wrong but you get the idea.) If a farmer or rural resident with a well needed a new pump or a considerable amount of steel pipe, the resident or the contractor doing the work had to make a case for the purchase to this allocation board. If the farmer or homeowner was out of water the request would quickly be granted. But a contractor just going to the supply house to get material might be told it was not in stock or even available.