A childhood memory of American troops.

In the summer of 1944 I was a seven years old boy living in the hamlet of Oldwoods. Nearby the American army had erected a large camp on common land known as Merrington Green, in readiness for the D Day landings. This was really exciting as my friend and I had never met any American people before, especially black Americans. My friend and I were never short of fruit and sweets as, whenever we watched the G.I.s training, they always threw us goodies to eat. Oranges and bananas were our favourite treats as we had never seen these fruits before.

Almost every day the American do-nut van would do the rounds of the camp, I suppose trying to make Shropshire more like home for the troops. Sometimes the G.I.s would cut a stick out of the hedge and thread about six do-nuts for us children, not forgetting Nip our dog, who had a do-nut all to himself.

We lived on a small farm keeping cows, pigs and hens. I don't think the G.I.s had any fresh eggs at the camp as they often came to the farm to get their upturned helmets filled with eggs.

Some evenings the G.I.s would walk from their camp down to the pub at Oldwoods (The Railway Inn I think). Many would have too much to drink and so in order to miss the M.P.s who came looking for them, they would make their way across the fields, crashing through hedges, sometimes next to our outside toilet, which was down at the bottom of our orchard. After one scary night, my aunty said she would never visit the toilet during darkness again.

On another occasion late one evening, my father who was leaning on the farm gate, noticed a G.I. hiding a jerry-can full of petrol in our hedge further down the road, presumably he was going to use the petrol for his own benefit later. That jerry-can came in very handy for us as we had a car which we could not use as we couldn't get fuel for it.

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