大象传媒

This story is taken from an interview with Robin Collins at the Royal British legion, Bangor, and has been added to the site with their permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions. The interviewer was Anita Cochrane, transcription was by Bruce Logan.
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The [air-raid] shelters were abused. The shelters on the street. But the shelters 鈥� There was dance hall at the top of our street, Richview dance hall. It was frequented by the Americans. Usually the Americans took the Girls for a kafuffle into the airraid shelters. I don鈥檛 know how the devil we would have got into them!
I always remember, in school I went to - Donegal road public elementary school 鈥� the yanks used to come around, you see, and they were very generous. They used to throw handfuls of coins in the air, and we all scrambled for them. And they brought us up Chewing gum and things that we never had.

[you wouldn鈥檛 have had chewing gum before, would you?]
Not really. We thought it was great. It was always Chicklit or something, that was the brand name of it. We thought it was great, because the yanks were stationed nearby and they all came up past the school. We thought it was great.

[did your parents like the yanks?]
The yanks were ok. In fact, mother鈥檚 next-door neighbour had a Canadian nephew and he come on leave there and he took me to the pictures. It was like a social occasion.

All the girls, the ones that were older ... The yanks all thought 鈥� the ladies, round our way there were quite a few 鈥淕I brides鈥� as they called themselves. I had a cousin who was a GI bride. The ladies all had the idea that 鈥� The only Americans that they had encountered before were Film stars. They thought that America was the land of film. They didn鈥檛 really, I don鈥檛 think they really thought at the time they were really 鈥� there was ordinary working-class Americans. They thought they were going into a land of luxury. They thought they were with Gary cooper!
Good-looking guys in uniform. And right enough, their uniforms were better than ours. With the accent and all. I remember American soldiers coming.

I remember VE day too. What I remember is, father and mother took me down to the City Hall. There was a statue of Queen Victoria, and these Americans climbed up the statue and sat on top of it. Mother thought that was terrible - Queen Victoria, sitting on top of her statue. That was very bad!

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