大象传媒

"Got any gum chum" was the way we greeted any unfortunate GI we encountered in the street, or wherever we could find them. As a 7 year old, in 1943, it seemed to me that sweets had been rationed for my entire lifetime. It appeared to us kids that the American soldiers stationed at General Eisenhower's headquarters in Bushy Park situated near Twickenham on the western suburbs of London, and close to Hampton Court, had a bottomless supply of this form of confectionery. Also, once appropriated from the luckless GI, not only did it come free, it seemed much more exciting than the British version of spearmint, which was only occasionally available to us in the middle of the war anyway. The home variety was contained in a peppermint-flavoured shell, which had be sucked or bitten through before reaching the chewy stuff. With the American brands, each stick was individually wrapped. It seemed really "cool," as the modern generation would term it, to pull it out of the packet with one's front teeth. That was, of course, if you had the full packet from which to pull as, more often than not, we were given a single stick. Of course, we felt most fortunate to get even that.

Maybe the U.S. military authorities had put out a request to the British government indicating their disapproval of their servicemen being constantly badgered by snotty-nosed English kids, with their elbows poking out through their holed jersey sleeves. Our schoolteacher had instructed us not to pester the Americans, and we were told that they only received a finite ration of the magical gum themselves. Of course, we didn't believe that and took no notice of this request. To us, these wisecracking guys in their smart gabardine uniforms, and their accents straight out of 20th Century Fox were probably all millionaires anyway. And had they not only come across an ocean to fight a war, but to also to charm and bring a little glamour into the lives of our young women? Surely a few sticks of gum were the least compensation for we kids and our seemingly deprived young lives, which had only known air raids and the deafening sound of ack-ack gunfire?

Anyone who knows Bushy Park will be aware of its splendid and appropriately named Chestnut Avenue. This ends with a magnificent round pond containing a fountain in the centre, although I doubt that it was in spraying action during the middle of the war? That line of stately horse chestnut trees was a magnet for us kids during the autumn and the conker-collecting season. My father was away with Monty and the British Army in the Middle East. So, it was left to my mum to take my five-year-old sister and me on the tuppenny trolley bus ride from our home in Isleworth to the other side of Twickenham and the famous ornamental park. Not content with just those already lying on the ground, as was the norm, we were tossing sticks at the conker-laden branches trees in order to bring down showers of the beautiful shiny nuts. The bigger they were, the better. Maybe conker collecting is not a traditional pastime for American kids, and a passing GI stationed at the HQ on the other side of the park, and where the D-Day invasion was being planned, queried what we were doing. After we had metaphorically frisked him for the ubiquitous gum, we explained it all to him, and he soon joined in the stick throwing fun. Naturally, being a big strong young man, he could throw his weapons much higher than could any of we three. We had his company for an hour or more and, upon reflection, I wondered if he was more interested in chatting to our pretty mum, than he was in helping a couple of London sprogs, seemingly senselessly chucking sticks in the air in order to gather a harvest of beautiful-looking, albeit inedible, nuts?

We lived on a main road, one of the capital's arteries, and this also led to the A3 Portsmouth Road. I recall how the windows and doors of our home rattled as the troop-filled transports, guns, tanks, and amphibious DUKWs trundled past day after day on their way to the coast that following spring. Later I saw the press photos, maybe newsreels as well, of the Normandy landings that summer and the fierce fighting that took place then, and for several months thereafter. Shortly after this my own father was shipped home from his war zone and medically discharged. However, I often wondered what had ever happened to our stick-throwing GI buddy and whether he survived the war or not? Assuming that they grew in his part of the U.S.A., I wondered if every time he saw a horse chestnut tree, he was reminded of that afternoon when, a long way from home, he chatted to a pretty young Englishwoman and threw sticks at trees with her two demanding offspring? Who knows, maybe to this day he has been reminiscing this to his children, grandchildren, even great grandchildren, on the peculiarities of the British and the time he spent here on his way to D-Day?

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