US Entry in the war - grey suits

Disclaimer: This story was submitted to the People's War site by a volunteer from CSV on behalf of Maureen Parry and has been added to the site with her permission. Maureen Parry fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

This is something that my husband told me. He’s no longer with us; he’s been dead twenty years. I didn’t meet him until after the war, I was a child during the war but he was a bomber command officer as a flight lieutenant. He trained in Canada in the frozen north where their eyelashes use to freeze because Canada took our boys over to train. And he had to go downto Pensecova in Florida with all the rest of them, this was on the train and it was three days and two nights. When they were going to cross into America they were issued with grey suits because America wasn’t in the war. So they were all ready with these grey suits and that morning someone came round the corridor and said “It’s alright boys you haven’t got to change, the Japs have bombed Pearl Harbour and the Yanks are in the war”. So that’s a small piece in the jigsaw but he was there at the time.

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