大象传媒

Our G.I.s

ALBERT.
I couldn't get through the gate quickly enough! I ran along the path and into the house yelling, "Mum, there's an American soldier sitting on Mrs. Williams's wall!"
We must have been expecting them, as although I was only 7 years old I knew this uniformed stranger was an American.
With typical South Walian hospitality my mother went outside to invite the young man into our house to wait. He accepted, but would not eat or drink anything, no doubt out of consideration for our rationed food. By a strange coincidence Mum was making American doughnuts that day - the ones with the hole - but Albert, the G.I. would not be tempted. I remember him as being very quiet and well-mannered.

SARGE.
Sarge was billetted further along the road, in a house just over the brow of the hill. He was a short, stocky man, with a fatherly affection for us children - no doubt he had children of his own back home in America, and wondered when, or if, he would see them again. Nowadays he would be roundly condemned for asking for a kiss in return for a candy bar, but in those far-off, innocent days our parents had no qualms about us being in his company.

DAD'S ARMY.
My father, being in poor health and unfit for military service, served in the Home Guard as a Lieutenant. As such he was in close contact with the American soldiers. I don't know the exact circumstances, but Dad, being a generous and kindly man, had lent money to some of the G.I.s to 'tide them over'.
The order to move out came suddenly, before some were able to repay Dad - no-one's fault, it was war-time and worse things were happening.
Some time later the postman brought a letter for Dad, bearing a foreign stamp. One of the young men had obviously survived the first horrors of D-Day and was honouring his debt by sending not cash, but American Army pay dockets. I can still sense my parents' emotion; this young man had been through the hell of the Normandy landings, yet had the decency to try to make amends for leaving without repaying what was, in the circumstances, a trifling debt.

I suppose I will never know who these young men were, or what was their fate. Did Albert get back home to eat some real American doughnuts? Does he remember the little girl dragging her mother out to speak to him?
Was Sarge spared, to return to his home and live a long and happy life with his children and grandchildren?
As for the anonymous young man - I would dearly love to meet him, to shake his hand and tell him what his gesture meant to my parents after years of the evils of war.

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