When Sam says that Fred Pierce "ended up like the Crystal Palace", she is referring to the fact that the large London landmark burned to the ground in November 1936.
Connie offers her friend Violet "stockings in a bottle", which was a bottle of brown liquid so that woman unable to afford real stockings could stain the lower parts of their legs brown to give the impression that they were wearing stockings.
"Among the Few" refers to the Royal Air Force during the Battle of Britain. Churchill said in a famous speech in Parliament, "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few." The RAF fought off the Luftwaffe and saved England from invasion.