Glenn Miller and All That...

So, wow, today is the 69th anniversary of D-Day. I was just curious. How heavily does the experiences of the World War II generation of Americans here in the UK color the way you see it today?

I was born in 1970 and came here in the mid-90s. In particular, in the back of my mind, I could always hear the music of Glenn Miller playing in every corner of central London. (Otherwise, I'm pretty much a dunce to what came before my birth. "I like Ike?" No, honestly, I prefer Tina Turner.)

Are there any World War II generation Americans on here? I'm not sure there are - that was a long time ago!

Born 1964, I'm a child of World War II generation parents. My mom went into nurses training originally as there was a big need for nurses in the military but the war ended before she finished her training & so she never became an army nurse in the end. My dad served as a US Naval construction worker (Seabee) in the South Pacific.

A great uncle was in the second wave at Omaha Beach, survived, marched on & fought the Battle of the Bulge etc - his memories weren't great & he never wished to return to the UK or Europe, saying he'd been there & done that. Can't say that I blamed him! He was here in the UK for the training exercises before they got on the boat for France & D-Day, but most of the rest of his time here - he was marching & fighting his way around France, Germany, Belgium, etc.

Another uncle served infantry in the Phillipines & never spoke about it much - we know there were horrifying things that he saw there.

All these people ^^^^ are dead & gone now though.

Most of what I learned about WWII here in Britain I learned from my in-laws, who were children at that time. I have enormous respect for what this country & its people endured through the war. Prior to moving here, my awareness of WWII was mostly based on its role in US history.

Doesn't colour anything for me in particular-  but I sure love Glenn Miller's music  - its great fun to play -he had such a particular big band sound and he inspired a lot of brilliant British "homegrown" swing music through the 50s and early 60s...

Playing in a "Swing Band" here several of my fellow musicians are in their 70s, 80s, and one is 93 (almost 94) and they have some very interesting stories and also, of course, a great love of Swing music. 

I'm also very interested in all the rationing, etc

I just think often how scary it must have been, but also that great resiliance to "keep calm and carry on" (which unfortunately is so overused now) -   

My father-in-law is always eager to talk about his experiences. He was stationed in Portsmouth.
2 stories in particular are very moving.

FIL was in the army but not on the front lines, he worked in the supply lines. His 2 brothers also fought in Europe and he arranged to meet up with one in London a few weeks before D-Day (not that they knew it then). He said to his brother, who knows if they'd ever see each other again so why not splash out on a hotel in London rather than staying in the YMCA hostel where many US troops stayed when they had short leave. Well, that night there was an air raid and the YMCA was heavily damaged and many American personnel were killed in the air raid.

The other story is D-Day itself, or the night before. He'd been to the cinema with an English girl, and walking her back home at about 10:30 there was a load roar as wave after wave of planes passed overhead, heading out over the channel. He knew then that was the start of the invasion, and it's backed up with the timeline programme I was watching on TV last night. That story literally made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck when he was telling me.

My in-laws were both children in Norfolk at the time.

My FIL's boyhood home suffered bomb damage during the bombing of Norwich & they had to move away (forget where - somewhere into the countryside) for awhile.

MIL lived with her mum & family somewhere nearer the Norfolk seaside, but they also had a bomb fall outside their home. Her mum just 'had a feeling' before it hit & went to get the baby out of its cot (can't remember if it was my MIL or a sibling of hers), which luckily she did before the bomb fell & blew the window out raining broken glass all over the baby's cot.

Her dad was stationed, protecting Britain, on the Isles of Scilly - which were never invaded, but could have been as I think some of the Channel Islands were? It suited him as he was a gardener by trade (worked on country estate gardens)! Every year after the war, some organisation on the Isles of Scilly would send him & his wife a bouquet of fresh daffodils in the spring to thank him for protecting them.

MIL also tells the story of a crate of oranges that washed up on a Norfolk beach (either at the end of the war, or just after) - I guess from shipwreck? They all raced down the beach to get them, never having seen an orange before!  

OH! And there was a lovely article in the Eastern Daily Press last Christmas about an American base somewhere there in the Norfolk area, where the American GIs essentially took a particular Norfolk village's children under its wing during the war - making sure they had presents & sweets & things at Christmastime when they wouldn't have had much otherwise. Then later the village teamed together with the American GIs to collect presents & sweets etc for the children of a French village that had suffered much during the Nazi occupation - and the Americans flew over what they had all collected together to the French village.

My father was 14 when war broke out so went to work down the coal mine. When he was old enough to join up they wouldn't allow him to live his job in the mines so he joined up with the Home Guard - I always picture him as being Private Pike in Dad's Army!
My mum went to do her nurse training as she wanted to join the QA's (Queen Alexandra Nursing Corp) and treat the wounded servicemen at the front. She used to say she was a little disappointed that the war finished before she'd finished her training!

My mum went to do her nurse training as she wanted to join the QA's (Queen Alexandra Nursing Corp) and treat the wounded servicemen at the front. She used to say she was a little disappointed that the war finished before she'd finished her training!

Aww - that sounds like my mom! 

My mom's all-time favourite TV show was MASH - I think she fantasized about being Hot Lips Houlihan, lol! 

I'm British and my mother was a young girl during WWII, living in a rural Welsh village with a big military camp and lots of American soldiers. She was too little, but her 7 older sisters were VERY POPULAR! 

I was alive in WWII. I was born in the latter part of the war (that is, latter from the English point of view). Sadly, I may have heard Glenn Miller live on the radio, but inside my mother's womb, it wasn't all that clear.

My father was stationed near Norwich in the 8th Air Force during the war. In the early 80's, before he died, he and my mother came for a visit. We spent one day at the US cemetary in Cambridge, and on to Norfolk where his base was. We didn't find it unfortunately. Today, with the internet, I know exactly where it was and can view photos of the plaque nearby commemorating the base. It's an industrial estate now, thankfully, and the old tower is still there. Many of the old bases are now industrial chicken farms.

I have his official Army photo (the standard one taken of all servicemen in their dress uniforms). I have the uniform that he was wearing in the photo in my closet here in England.

I've spent a lot of time in Germany on business. One place I used to visit occasionally was Koblenz, and I made some very good friends there. And yes, it's one of the places my father's squadron bombed. Being good friends, I was able to talk about it with the Germans. As for the German execs (from another company) that were with me as we drove thru Coventry, well, that was an equally friendly, but somewhat different conversation.

My British FIL was in the Paras; Arnhem, and all that. I met his best friend at his funeral. They were captured, escaped, recaptured, and re-escaped from a German POW camp. They were on the long march just before the war ended. The friend was 'characterised' in the movie The Longest Day, and is mentioned in several books.

My British MIL was in the Land Army. She's still alive. When I want to perk here up a bit, we talk about those days. My grandfather in the States was a farmer, and I used to drive his old Ford tractor all over the farm. My MIL drove the British version of that tractor in the Land Army, so we've spent hours just talking about how the gear shift worked, all the various pedals, etc. on the tractor, and her stories of working on various farms during the war.