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"This story was submitted to the People's War site by CSV/´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Nottingham on behalf of Geoffrey Faulkner with his permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions"

1939 — There was a big house in the village, the airforce took it over, then the Yanks took it over.
I got a pass to go down to the Yanks — we used to collect their washing and take it to the woman in the village who did it, my mother was one of them, we then used to take it back to them. They’d give you a packet of fags — I had a drawer full — that’s when I started smoking.
Me and another lad — the gardeners son did that. They had one woman doing their washing and always kept the same woman as they got used to the way they did the washing, my mothers one used to fly over in a small plane and drop the washing out into our garden, but used to collect it in a jeep.
They built huts in the grounds, one end of the hut was given to use to store everything — the washing etc.
We used to clean their shoes for a shilling a pair. We had money but couldn’t spend it, there was nothing to spend it on. At one time I had a pocket of 5 pound notes.
When we got some money the Yanks used to come down and borrow money from us kids. If they borrowed 5 they had to give back 10 (double whatever they borrowed), we lost some though.
We used to go into their naffy and buy things, saying they were for the Yanks, you couldn’t see across the room for smoke. We had meals there sometimes, they did the best chocolate pudding — I still remember it was fun.
We were about 60 miles from London and we used to stand at the bottom of our garden and watch part of the Battle of Britain.
When a plane went down we’d run to it to get there first to try to collect things like the flaring pistols.

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