One day in June 1942, East Midlands villagers shaded their eyes and gazed into the sky to behold strange, huge new aircraft descending in procession onto their airfields. These proved to be crewed by strange and often huge, spectacularly healthy new Americans. English people, accustomed to the decayed and often absent teeth of their own countrymen, were especially impressed by those of the newcomers.
The RAF’s airmen had become the most glamorous and admired component of Britain’s war effort, but these transatlantic “flyboys” were something else again. They were so cool and sure and rich, with their Jeeps and candy, their gum and swanky uniforms. They had come, some of them were rash enough to tell their hosts after a few drinks in the musty pubs of Northamptonshire and Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, to win the war. And, golly gosh, some of them really believed this.
