大象传媒

I am an American historian and author now living near Canterbury in Kent. I was born in Virginia in 1940 and well remember planting and keeping a Victory Garden with my older brother and mom, Daisy Stephens Norton, on my grandparents' tobacco farm. My father, 1st Lieutenant Allyn Sumner Norton, Sr., USAAF, was a pilot and bombardier flying B-17 Flying Fortress bombers in Britain from 1942 until early 1945. Like many American pilots, he had been billeted in the home of a British family. In his case, it was the home of First World War British Army Brigidier James Potter in Cheltenham. The Potters had a teenage daughter, Eileen. Over the months my father was in Britain, Eileen and my mother painstakingly developed a private correspondence code. This code allowed Eileen to let my family in Virginia know when and generally where my father was flying and if he remained alive and well, without attracting the notice of the British postal censors. Many of his missions were over North Africa and were known as visits to "the spice shop," while his missions over Germany were referred to as "cabbage farming" after the American slang for Germans as "Krauts,"--- the German word for cabbage. Many other words and phrases were created to provide my family with some support and encouragement.

Sadly, all of this correspondence was lost in a fire in the 1950s. However, when I first lived in England in the 1970s, I found Eileen and her own family still living in the Potter family house in Cheltenham. My mother came over several times to visit. She and Eileen met for the first time, and I visited Eileen and her family on several other occasions in Cheltenham.

William I. S. MacArthur-Norton,
Captain, US Coast Guard (Ret.)

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