Our Yanks - Margaret Mayhew

August 1943 - and into the quiet country village of King's Thorpe roared a Fighter Group of the American Eighth Army Air Force. The villagers had never seen anything like them before. They were glamorous, exciting and ready to win the war. Some, like the Brigadier, called them "Damned Yanks" and hated them on sight. They were late for this war just like they'd been for the last. They chewed gum, smoked in the street and whistled at the girls. Young Saliy Barnet from the bakery - fifteen-going-on-eighteen - thought them gorgeous and used her large blue eyes to good advantage. Timid Miss Cutteridge found herself forming a warm and wonderful friendship with Corporal Bilsky, who didn't know how to use a cake fork but was great at digging her garden. Nine-year-old Tom Hazlet discovered the Yanks were an excellent source of business and traded stolen eggs for cigarettes, which he sold at a profit. He really liked the Yanks. On young, newly-widowed Erika Beauchamp, and Agnes Dawes, the Rector's daughter, the Americans were to make an overwhelming emotional impact.;The one thing you couldn't do about the Yanks was to ignore them, and finally everyone - even the Brigadier - came to accept them as their own. They became Our Yanks.