WHEN THIS CHAPTER FIRST APPEARED in the New Yorker, I received an interesting letter from Mr. W. Hanks of Worthing, Sussex, England, which throws some further light on the situation I tried to describe. He has given me permission to quote it here.
I spent ten years in America before the war and I’m half British and half American by birth. Like you, I deplored the lack of friendship between the U.S. and British troops. I have set down some reasons to account for this from the British point of view. Many of them apply particularly to those who were in the Mediterranean campaign. Most of them are unfair.
1. That the G.I.’s were having a whale of a time with the girls in England while the British were doing the early fighting in the desert.
2. That the Americans were playing the same game as in the last war—collect the money and capture the British trade, then come in time for the victory parade.
3. No troops like other bodies of troops, English, American or any other nationality. (If you want to enjoy yourself, it’s best to be the only unit in the town.) “Americans no business in Greece—look what they said in their papers,” etc.
4. The British troops imagined in Italy that the Americans were all “base wallahs.” (A fighting division seldom sees any other division when it is in the line, and it is only when they come out for a rest that they meet other formations.) “There’s a hundred men in Naples for one Yank in the line,” etc.
5. It was argued that if everyone was putting everything into the pot, the Americans were using up too much war effort on their own comfort. For example, unlimited supplies of clothes and food, “a jeep for every private,” particularly in the rear areas, when the British couldn’t get them for use in the forward areas. This partly answers your comment re the lack of lifts to U.S. troops by British drivers.
6. And the old ones—that the Yanks had too much money, that they didn’t know how to drink and that they made too much noise.
I’m afraid that ideas such as the above are firmly fixed in the minds of even the supposedly better-educated British soldiers. I also found that the members of an officers’ mess were not interested in hearing about America, although they would condescend to read my American magazines. Of course, they cried out in scorn at those dreadful advertisements of G.I. Joes making Walt Whitman speeches on the beach just after landing, but they didn’t care to be told that American soldiers also became slightly sick when they read them.
I was with a field artillery regiment. We were due for a rest after a long spell in Italy when the Greek business turned up. We went to Greece expecting an unpleasant “Black and Tan” job for the rest of the war. As far as we could gather, in the early stages, we were breaking up a riot. I saw a few examples of what the “rebels” had done. It was sufficient to make me feel, at the time, that we were on the right side. At the end of my eight months in Greece I had given up all hope of ever finding out which side was which….
Entertainment in a British mess is liable to be about as gay as a church supper. One thing you must remember is that in the regular army the junior officers don’t speak unless they are spoken to. This goes on for years apparently, although there are occasional lapses when everyone gets stinking drunk, clothes are torn off and drink is thrown. It is talked about for some time afterwards.
You probably did something dreadful in taking a woman into that mess. If you had taken twenty, you would have been more popular.