大象传媒

This story has been written onto the 大象传媒 People鈥檚 War site by CSV Storygatherer Lucy Thomas of Callington U3A on behalf of Josephine Dodman - now King. They fully understand the terms and conditions of the site.

OVER THERE!

My name is Josephine Dodman I lived in East Anglia during the war in a village near Bury St. Edmonds. I was born in 1940 so I don鈥檛 remember a huge amount about the war but the one overwhelming thing I do remember is the Americans who were based at the local air bases. There were large numbers of them in East Anglia and there are still air bases there today. The other thing I can remember are the Nissen huts which formed the big encampments. We loved the Americans who we thought were quite exotic. We thought that they came from the moon or the other side of the world or something. They were different from anything else in our experience and they were certainly different from the English soldiers and airman. They were much taller and extremely handsome and they looked wonderful in their uniforms. We kids thought they were fantastic!

They of course were young men and flocked around the young women. They principally came to see our young aunts which is how we met up with them. They always had lovely things to give us. When they came they gave us things like spearmint chewing gum which I had never tasted up to that time, and I can still remember that taste to this day . Being the war of course we didn鈥檛 have sweets or anything like that so I think there was a bit of cupboard love there. They would also have Hershey bars, 鈥渃andy鈥� they called it. They had these wonderful, exotic accents which we thought were amazing.

Eventually one of my aunts married an American airman and I was one of her bridesmaids. She was one of the first G.I. brides to go over to America. Ultimately, she told me, she didn鈥檛 really have a very good time over there because she said she really wasn鈥檛 very well accepted by her husband鈥檚 family. She must have been extremely lonely. I can imagine coming from a small village in East Anglia going to Fort Worth in Texas must have been a huge culture shock. I had another aunt who also wanted to marry an
American and this time he was a black American. You can imagine that didn鈥檛 go down very well in rural East Anglia at the time The situation was that parents had to give permission for daughters to marry a foreigner. One parent allowed her daughter to go and the other one refused. That was a cause of huge regret for my aunt forever afterwards.
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