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I can remember the Americans first arriving in Hadleigh. Somehow or other my Dad got to know some of them, I think down at the ‘White Hart’, which was the meeting place.

You can imagine my excitement when I got home from school one day and there were three Americans in my home.

They used to cycle to Hadleigh and we got to know 4 or 5 of them very well. Mum and Dad were invited to social events in Raydon and the boys would come to us fairly regularly.

I remember once going with Mum and Dad to one of the Raydon socials and I was left in the bar and was well plied with Coca-Cola.

The highlight of the evening was when one of the Americans came in to use one of these slot machines and he hit the jackpot and there were florins (two shilling pieces) everywhere! We kept in touch and I’m still writing to one of them.

I was 10 in the last year of the war and on my birthday a jeep came to collect me and take me up to Raydon airbase and I was shown around.

My eyes boggled — I’d never seen food like it and food that was being wasted. The high point was when we went in to the hangars and sat in the cockpit of a ‘Mustang’ and a ‘Thunderbolt’ and Major Colvin asked permission to take me up in to the control tower.

I went up and I could hear them radioing in fighters from France and Northern Germany and they came in to land while we were there.

As you know, Raydon was a fighter base, but that day a ‘Flying Fortress’, a B17, a big bomber, came and landed. It was a dream come true.

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