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This story was submitted by Helen Hughes of the People's War team in Wales on behalf of Ian Clissold and is added to the site with his permission.

The Americans came in 1942 to 43… It was great. They had chewing gum and a different way of life. They were just nice people…we enjoyed their company. We had sweets off them and everything. Years later we found a tin of sweets we’d been given — it must have been ten years later — and those sweets were as good as ever when we opened the tin. I remember one American saying I’ll give you so many dollars if you can spit that chewing gum at a target….and there was a weed with a flower on it and he just spat his chewing gum straight into the middle of it. And that’s the way they were…just happy-go-lucky boys. They knew where they were going…Omaha, Gold, and into France they knew what they were up to. I remember the day they were going. The camp cleared overnight….they were there one day…and gone the next. They loaded them up and took them down to Dover and over on the ferries on D-day. When they left they left a heap of contraceptives - there must have been thousands of them and they chucked them all out in a heap when they were going abroad …us boys got hold of these and started blowing them up as balloons and were going up the street with them….and our parents were coming out bursting them! They wouldn’t say what they were — and we pretended not to know.
A funny thing happened recently when we went to Tampa in Florida. There was a chap there sweeping, and he was crippled… we went across to him and he said “Where are you from” and we said “Abergavenny South Wales” “Oh damn it all” he said “I was from Ross — stationed in Ross in the war”. You’d never credit that …you go all that way out there to Tampa and he remembered Abergavenny as if it were yesterday…the hospitality he had there.

I can remember prior to the war starting the Territorial Army had a barracks at the bottom of North Street…and they were stationed there. First thing in the morning they’d have a full military band come out…playing all the way along the Brecon Road…up the Green Lane, prior to the Americans coming…and they’d dig air raid shelters for us, and they’d play all day there. And we used to get bottles of pop — Tizer pop — at tuppence halfpenny a bottle and there’d be a halfpenny back on the bottle and we boys would have the halfpennies. Funny old days.

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