How the yanks should deal with us

Anyone else besides me that can remember walking into butchers with their Mom and seeing her hand over the ration book - Was only 5 or 6 (1949-50) but can remember it vividly -In war Mom was conductress on trams and Dad was part time ambulance driver (blind in one eye) and he went round picking up bit's after bombing. - Funny how your parent's never mentioned the war.

Dave
 
Great read. Would like to read a modern version. It would go along the lines of....


"You may see lots of women walking around in trousers. This is because they do wear the trousers in many relationships"

"You will see lots of children crowded around women walking the streets. These are not her childrens friends, but they are her offspring"

"stay away from neighbourhoods with bicycle tyres hanging from the lamp posts, or old shoes hanging from phone lines"

"All the automobiles are german. The british think the germans are the best engineers in the world, What they fail to realise is their very own country have invented the best things than germany and even us americans could ever dream of"
 
I do understand why wages was an issue. The last thing you would need in a war is army personel questioning why their lives were less valuable than the american lives. Or gi's acting like johnny rich man flashing thier cash in a country with rations and povertry.
 
"The English language didn't spread across the oceans and over the mountains and jungles and swamps of the world because these people were panty-waists."

*proud*
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DXP55 said:
Anyone else besides me that can remember walking into butchers with their Mom and seeing her hand over the ration book - Was only 5 or 6 (1949-50) but can remember it vividly -In war Mom was conductress on trams and Dad was part time ambulance driver (blind in one eye) and he went round picking up bit's after bombing. - Funny how your parent's never mentioned the war.

Dave
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I don't personally but my Gran does. She has told me a few times about the time her Granny got a knock on the door late at night from a solider with a bag of sugar. The whole close put in money to buy the 'black market' bag.

My late Nan (great granmother) could remember more about it but very rarely talked about it. Being in Scotland we didn't see much in the way of bombing but there were arms and barracks at our race course. My Gran told me about how the bombs would go up the high street and everyone was meant to pretend they hadn't seen them.
 
Mat said:
"The English language didn't spread across the oceans and over the mountains and jungles and swamps of the world because these people were panty-waists."

*proud*
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Haha, I felt the same, but it more of a proud/conflicted, 'should I be proud of what my country acheived (rather than ME)?' kinda way. I probably just over-think these things.

I admit my eyes glazed a bit when I read that.
 
Interesting read that, thanks.

I like the bit about coffee and tea and

"The British are beer-drinkers-and can hold it."
 
It is an interesting read, and something I think the youth of today (and maybe some middle aged people too) should maybe have a look at - not because of the Americanisms in there, but to remember that within two generations ago, how hard ordinary people had it - never mind whether they've got the latest phones, or trainers. Might print it off and get my daughter to read it as part of her reading practice, see if it throws up any questions.....
 
The americans that come over here to work at some of the airforce bases still get given a little booklet on the way of life in Britain. One of the thinigs they get warned about is drinking with the locals :p
 
I enjoyed that, thanks. Would be interested to read a modern day equivalent.
 
DXP55 said:
[..] Funny how your parent's never mentioned the war.
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Not really, no. I've spoken with a number of people about the war and it's not something to be talked about lightly. It's not something that is easily mentioned, i.e. just referred to in passing.

Random example:

Years ago, a klaxon sounded in a TV program I was watching at home with my mother. I could feel her fear. There was nothing to explain it in the context of the TV program - the klaxon was nothing important, something to do with lunch break at the factory if I recall correctly - and in any case her reaction was much too strong. She was a girl during the war. A klaxon was an air raid warning. 50 years is nowhere near long enough to forget that, or to make it something that can be easily just mentioned.
 
Angilion said:
A military that distributed this leaflet about the differences between the USA and Britain and how USA soldiers should react to them in order to avoid offending Britons couldn't possibly have been unaware that differences in how "race" was viewed in the two countries would also have been relevant in that context. Rather more so than, for example, whether the currency used a decimal system or not.
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Stephen Fry said on Qi that there were incidents of fights in pubs when American GI would come for a drink and insisted black patrons were expelled from the premises. Apparently, both the white and any black Britons would fight them.

Make you proud to be British :D

The six-point code drawn up by Mrs May in Somerset so shocked her fellow parishioners that ‘they told their husbands’, and one of them, a local councillor, prepared ‘a full statement to be sent to the Ministry of Information.’ More importantly, they told Sunday Pictorial, whose reassurances echo those expressed in The Times a century before. The article ends:
Any coloured soldier who reads this may rest assured that there is no colour bar in this country and that he is as welcome as any other Allied soldier.

He will find that the vast majority of people have nothing but repugnance for the narrow-minded uninformed prejudices expressed by the vicar’s wife.

There is—and will be—no persecution of coloured people in Britain. (Sunday Pictorial 1942; italics in original)
And indeed, there were cases of small but heroic cases of resistance to ‘the prejudice which certain white soldiers are intent upon imposing,’ as Roi Ottley was keen to point out. He goes on to tell of an incident in which
US soldiers boarded a bus in London and tried to eject two Negro soldiers from seats they already occupied.

‘You can’t do that sort of thing here,’ a woman conductor protested. ‘We won’t have it. Either you stand or off you go.’

They stood. (Ottley 1942: 6-7)


http://www.bulldozia.com/projects/index.php?id=293
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