How the yanks should deal with us

A great read thank you. My favourite bit "When you see a girl in khaki or air-force blue with a bit of ribbon on her tunic-remember she didn't get it for knitting more socks than anyone else in Ipswich."
 
"The British people are anxious for you to know that in normal times Britain looks much prettier, cleaner, neater."
 
I find it almost hysterical that they focus so much on how much the soldiers are paid... We are fighting a damn war to survive here not making ourselves rich... I doubt soviet soldiers even got paid, they were fighting for their country and not for money.
 
Lazder said:
I find it almost hysterical that they focus so much on how much the soldiers are paid... We are fighting a damn war to survive here not making ourselves rich... I doubt soviet soldiers even got paid, they were fighting for their country and not for money.
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it was a contentious issue, read literally any source on american-anglo "squaddie" relations during the war.

interesting read but not how they should deal with us now, we have changed a fair bit from 1940's wartime austerity :/
 
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Tis quite funny to see how we were perceived by the Americans back then - I bought this as a small book in some card shop a few years ago - gave a copy to my American flatmate.
 
Lazder said:
I find it almost hysterical that they focus so much on how much the soldiers are paid... We are fighting a damn war to survive here not making ourselves rich... I doubt soviet soldiers even got paid, they were fighting for their country and not for money.
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I find it very sensible, because it was an important issue. Britain was essentially a war zone and arms factory and there was very little spare anything. The USA was a prosperous country outside of the war with an abundance of spare everything. Britain was "fighting a damn war to survive" and everyone here knew it the hard way. The USA was also "fighting a damn war to survive", but hardly any of the people of the USA really understood that. People in the USA were not pulling their friends' corpses out of the remains of homes. People in Britain were. That sort of thing makes a difference. The difference in spare money was very important. It was sensible for the USA military to place that emphasis on it because it was a potential hindrance to the effectiveness of the alliance.

I think the whole leaflet was very sensible.

I've read that the USA military also issued its soldiers with a leaflet regarding the differences in how "race" was treated in Britain. It sounds plausible - severe anti-"black" racism was normal in the USA in the 1940s and the relative lack of it in Britain would be at least as much of the cultural issue as the things covered in this leaflet. Does anyone know if there was such a leaflet?
 
That was quite lovely; Makes me respect them a bit more that they were that conscientious.

I do feel sorry for them having to learn our money though. :P
 
JCBeastie said:
That was quite lovely; Makes me respect them a bit more that they were that conscientious.

I do feel sorry for them having to learn our money though. :P
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That was one of the few things for which it really was possible to objectively say that one country had arranged something better than the other. I understand why the old British system of currency was how it was(*), but a decimal system is clearly better.

* It's an amusing coincidence that the old British currency system was LSD. It wasn't created that way as a result of people taking a potent hallucinogen and using their trip as an inspiration for a system of currency :)
 
I appreciated it.

I find it interesting that according to this we have adopted many American words.
 
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