H.E. Bates Companion

In this sequel to "My Grandfather's Farm," published the year before, also in the Royal Air Force Journal, Bates writes that "the Americans are packing up" and the land is coming back. He refers to the "invasion" of the Americans, their numerous marriages to English women, and their deaths in battle, as a revolution. He writes of the stages of English acceptance of the Americans -- excitement, curiosity, suspicion, slight resentment, and "the traditional English slow-opening reserve"," followed by increasing understanding that both peoples shared a common enemy and common goal. He notes how American pilots over time adopted some of the restraint and mannerisms of R.A.F. pilots, and finally, he contemplates the long-term effect of this cultural exchange, concluding that the strongest link will be in memory: "With us it will long be wondered at, talked about, valued and remembered. It will become a legend." In the New York Herald Tribune (September 16, 1945, p. SM9, with title "GI's Won the British!"), Royal Air Force Journal (December 1945, iii, 12, pp. 456-458).