Specific information on the Americans in Chesham is hard to come by but the interviews (four mins. and
two mins) included here with Deidre Britten and Kath Dolling provide some details on this. Reggie Gray adds a young boy's
perspective to the American presence and relations between British and US servicemen (3' 30" secs). The Bucks Examiner sheds little light
on the presence of the Americans in Chesham or Bovingdon and war-time secrecy is probably the reason.
However, John Young, ,in his contribution to an evening held to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the end of the war,
(the video of which was kindly lent to the department by Keith Fletcher), states that US troops began
arriving in the summer of 1942 and their first mention in the Examiner wasn't until towards the end
of 1943! He also makes clear that the US airfield at Bovingdon was not a serving bomber base but a combat
crew replacement centre for some 2800 personnel. Chesham, obviously, became the R & R destination for
the crews and there was a US 'First Aid' station in the Broadway whose main function was distribute
condoms to servicemen. As John Young, a schoolboy at the time, ironically put it: "We used to ask them
about their culture and all they ever asked us was whether we had any sisters."
Generally, of course, they were popular with British women for a variety of reasons.
American servicemen earned seven times more than their British counterparts and there wasn't much to
spend it on, apart from British women. Their uniforms - all soldiers wore a tie, not just the officers - were
smarter. They could shower girlfriends with chocolate, nylon stockings and other hard-to-get items.
Of course, this could cause resentment among British troops who described Americans as 'over paid, over-sexed, and over here'.
German propaganda was not slow to exploit tension. The Germans produced near-pornographic leaflets depicting
what the Americans were getting up to back in 'Blighty' with their women while the Brits were doing the fighting. There
was a 500% increase in the divorce rate during the war and 1.8 million illegitimate babies were born but this
may have been just a coincidence...
