Pamphlet issued to US forces
"YOU are going to Great Britain as part of an Allied Offensive - to meet Hitler and beat him on his own
ground. For the time being you will be Britain’s guest. The purpose of this guide is to start getting you
acquainted with the British, their country, and their ways."
— from the introduction
It was 1942. World War II was approaching middlegame; the Battle of Britain had been won, Blitzkreig was over. The USA had finally declared war on Germany. Allied preparations were being made to liberate Europe. American troops and materiel were heading to the UK. Britain was in a state after years of devastating bombing raids by the Lutfwaffe, infrastructure was damaged, factories downed and homes levelled. Somehow the RAF (with a great deal of help from Polish, Canadian and ANZAC pilots) had beaten the Germans back sufficiently that they cancelled their "Operation Sea Lion" invasion plans. With a relatively safe country to work from, Allied forces could gather and train together in Britain, ready to crush the wicked Hun.
In this climate, American troops were being readied to come to join the fight for Europe. The United States War Department knew that their troops would be coming to a very different culture, with a damaged economy, and decided that they needed to prepare their personnel socially as well as militarily. It was with this background that this handbook was issued, with advice on how to comport themselves in a country whose inhabitants and society had been battered and bruised by war.
I'll present some of the points raised as I re-read the pamphlet. Any quotations will be in blockquotes for clarity. The writing is quite frank in places, in others appearing today to be comically understated. It begins with a little history.
Instructions for American Servicemen in Britain
NO TIME TO FIGHT OLD WARS. If you come from an Irish-American family, you may think of the
English as persecutors of the Irish, or you may think of them as enemy Redcoats who fought against
us in the American Revolution and the War of 1812. But there is no time today to fight old Wars over
again or bring up old grievances. We don't worry about which side our grandfathers fought on in the
Civil War because it doesn’t mean anything now.
The most evident truth of all is that in their major ways of life the British and American people are
much alike. They speak the same language. They both believe in representative government, in
freedom of worship, in freedom of speech. But each country has minor national characteristics which
differ. It is by causing misunderstanding over these minor differences that Hitler hopes to make his
propaganda effective.
This advice was more necessary then you might think. I've met a few Americans who seem to have longer memories than the Welsh. They are few, but they're there. An "Irish-American" from South Boston once tried to pick a fight with me on Saint Patrick's Day because clearly, being English, I was an enemy of the Irish and Irishness. (Nothing could be further from the truth; I sympathised with the Irish cause right up to the point when they began a bombing campaign in my homeland. Funded by NORAID and raising money in New York and Boston, the IRA blew up a friend of mine in Manchester.) I have apologised that we burned down the White House in 1814, I've written about one of the American heroes of that war. Let bygones be bygones, I say.
BRITISH RESERVED, NOT UNFRIENDLY. …on a small crowded island where forty-five million people live, each man learns to guard his privacy carefully - and is equally careful not to invade another man's privacy.
Another difference. The British have phrases and colloquialisms of their own that may sound funny to
you. You can make just as many boners in their eyes. It isn’t a good idea, for instance, to say
"bloody" in mixed company in Britain. It is one of their worst swear words. To say "I look like a bum" is
offensive to their ears, for to the British this means that you look like your own backside it isn’t
important - just a tip if you are trying to shine in polite society. Near the end of this guide you will find
more of these differences of speech.
British money is in pounds, shillings, and pence. The
British are used to this system and they like it, and all your arguments that the American decimal
system is better won't convince them. They won’t be pleased to hear you call it "funny money", either.
They sweat hard to get it (wages are much lower in Britain than America) and they won’t think you
smart or funny for mocking at it.
DON’T BE A SHOW OFF. The British dislike bragging and showing off. American wages and
American soldier’s pay are the highest in the world. When pay day comes it would be sound practice
to learn to spend your money according to British standards. They consider you highly paid.
Huh-huh, he said "boner". Clearly there is much that is comical now through the filter of eighty years, but there was also a serious intent here. Having lost so much in the war, the Brits were sensitive to their plight and often resented the GIs, whom they considered to be "over paid, over-sexed and over here", a phrase popularised by comedian Tommy Trinder¹. The behaviour of many American servicemen led to much animosity, especially when they bragged about their relative wealth or flashed their riches. On the other hand, the natives weren't above mocking the Yanks for not understanding many things about Britain, and the currency was certainly one of those elements. On the topic of sex, I am also aware that the Americans took issue with our morality, or rather our loose women.
AGE INSTEAD OF SIZE. On furlough you will probably go to the cities, where you will meet the
Briton’s pride in age and tradition. You will find that the British care little about size, not having the
"biggest" of many things as we do. For instance, London has no skyscrapers. Not because English
architects couldn’t design one, but because London is built on swampy ground, not on a rock like
New York and skyscrapers need something solid to rest their foundations on. In London they will
point out to you buildings like Westminster Abbey, where England’s kings and greatest men are
buried, and St. Paul’s Cathedral with its famous dome, and the Tower of London, which was built
almost a thousand years ago. All of these buildings have played an important part in England’s
history. They mean just as much to the British as Mount Vernon or Lincoln’s birthplace do to us.
Still true. I learned this the first time I entertained some American noder visitors from for a few nights. En route to a local pub, they asked about the church of Saint Leodegarius as we walked past. I pointed out that it dated back to the 12th century, and was stunned at their amazement.
Cricket will strike you as slow compared with American baseball, but it isn’t easy to play well. You will
probably get more fun out of "village cricket" which corresponds to sandlot baseball than you would
out of the big three-day professional matches…and you have to know the fine points of the game to understand what is going on.
Football in Britain takes two forms. They play soccer, which is known in America; and they also play
"rugger", which is a rougher game and closer to American football, but is played without the padded
suits and headguards we use. Rugger requires fifteen on a side, uses a ball slightly bigger than our
football, and allows a lateral but not forward passing. The English do not handle the ball as cleanly as
we do, but they are far more expert with their feet.
You will find that English crowds at football or cricket matches are more orderly and polite to the
players than American crowds. If a fielder misses a catch at cricket, the crowd will probably take a
sympathetic attitude. They will shout "good try" even if it looks to you like a bad fumble. In America
the crowd would probably shout "take him out". This contrast should be remembered. It means that
you must be careful in the excitement of an English game not to shout out remarks which everyone in
America would understand, but which the British might think insulting.
This amuses me. Soccer crowds are notoriously rowdy and loud, there's a long tradition of hostile chanting, and much more tribal rivalry than I see today in the US. This may have been true at the time, but by Jove it's not how I saw British sports. As a former rugby player I frequently had cause to disagree that it was "a hooligan's game played by gentlemen".
KEEP OUT OF ARGUMENTS. You can rub a Britisher the wrong way by telling him "We came over
and won the last one." Each nation did its share. But Britain remembers that nearly a million of her
best manhood died in the last war. America lost 60,000 in action.
Still true. By the time US troops came to Blighty, we'd already won the battle in the skies, and we'd done it without military help from the USA. More than anyone, Polish pilots were our salvation in that one. Also Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders. (Somewhere I've a quote from a noder about the Polish pilots and their determination and courage. I'll see if I can dig it out.) If my memory serves, there were fewer than ten US pilots in the whole of that months-long battle, most of whom called themselves Canadian. Not that I blame them, as it would have been illegal at the time of Lend-Lease to engage in the war on our behalf.
I could go on, but I'm not about to quote the whole thing, but I hope you've got the flavour. There are whole sections discussing the war and its effect on the British, the economy and the culture. "The British have been bombed, night after night and month after month. Thousands of them have lost their houses, their possessions, their families. Gasoline, clothes, and railroad travel are hard to come by and incomes are cut by taxes to an extent we Americans have not even approached." It must have been sobering to many Americans to see for themselves the effect of the war on a physical level. "You will find that all Britain is a war zone and has been since September 1939."
There is much discussion about American and British language, from accent and pronunciation to word choice and dialect. This is the same issue I had coming to the US. I have many stories about this very topic. On this note, it's fair to say that the British have changed the English language as much (possibly more) than they accuse the Americans of doing. I wish I'd been a fly on the wall in some rural pub when baffled Americans met baffling dialects.
In a section of "DO'S AND DONT'S" there's a lovely line "It is always impolite to criticize your hosts; it is militarily stupid to criticize your allies". I'm reminded of the advice in the Håvamål Proverbs, detailing the responsibilities of both host and guest. The British public were to some degree reluctant hosts and didn't appreciate criticism, whether implied or stated.
But somehow, we managed to rub along and the rest is, of course, history. The Battle for Europe was won at great cost to all sides. It saddens me that some Americans (a very few) genuinely have no understanding of what Britain went through to provide a safe harbour to enable the Normandy Landings, but I am grateful nonetheless.
The Glaring Omission
One element the booklet failed to mention was the issue of skin colour. There weren't huge numbers of black or brown people in the UK at the time (although after the war there was a massive influx of people from the West Indies and the Indian subcontinent). There was racism, yes, but not on the scale and level of organisation that the US had. There'd been no massive slavery of Africans in the UK, no Jim Crow laws. So when black GIs came over they faced a very different culture than they may have been used to. US commanders and military police wanted to introduce segregation in the UK as in the US. The British by and large rejected this.
The Battle of Bamber Bridge² was one of the outcomes. A five-hour confrontation between troops and military police led to one death and four injuries to black American soldiers. It's a sad reflection on the times that black soldiers were treated as second-class citizens despite being as willing to give their all as their white counterparts. One line in particular from the article cited below demonstrates the major differences between the two countries:
"Local resident Gillian Vesey recalled how, as a young barmaid at the Olde Hob Inn, she stood up for African American soldiers against attempts by white Americans to impose discriminatory practices in the pub, insisting that the American white soldiers wait their turn rather than expecting to be served before their black colleagues."
What a bloody shame. Thanks, America for coming to the aid of Europe. But please keep your silliness in check in the future.
The text
Buy a copy if you'd like
¹ https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/oversexed-overpaid-and-over-here.html
² No Jim Crow in the UK - The Battle of Bamber Bridge
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