1944 US SOLDIERS on leave in LONDON, magazine article, GIs WWII

$11.00 Buy It Now, FREE Shipping, 30-Day Returns, eBay Money Back Guarantee
Seller: Top-Rated Seller busybeas_books ✉️ (15,940) 100%, Location: Hubbards, Nova Scotia, CA, Ships to: WORLDWIDE, Item: 385721546713 1944 US SOLDIERS on leave in LONDON, magazine article, GIs WWII .

Selling is a 1944 magazine article about:

US soldiers in London

Title: When GI Joes Took London

Author: Maj. Frederick Simpich, Jr., GSC, USA 
Quoting the first page “D Day was coming fast, but that didn't worry GI Joes. They still swarmed through London, sight-seeing by day, painting the town red at night-when they could get the "paint."

For months I shared wartime London's kaleidoscopic life. I saw how our men behaved, and how London reacted to them. Here are my notes, in present-tense, day-to-day narrative.

Despite blackout and congestion, the "baby blitz," and austerity meals, London stands as the best leave town of the war to date. GI Joe insists on that.

A 48-hour pass to the capital is, to GI's "somewhere in England," full compensation for weeks in a mist-bound Nissen hut. With the invasion under way, they will look back from battlefields on the Continent to Soho and the Marble Arch as the next best thing to a furlough home.           

So great is the demand to visit London that complex Army regulations limiting the number of passes are required to ensure transients a place to sleep. Notwithstanding, eager soldiers, aided by soft-hearted commanders, contrive to cram the already over-crowded city.

Some nights as many as a thousand men, turned away from regular billets, sleep on cots laid by the American or British Red Cross in a bomb shelter reserved for the overflow.

As another measure of the numbers of Americans who daily swarm London's honey-comb of narrow streets, consider that last year the Red Cross filled more than 75,000 invitations from Britishers who asked our boys to their homes. The many added thousands who broke bread over English tables without the knowledge of the Red Cross will never be known. But the Army's Special Services Division, which, with the Red Cross, is responsible for soldier morale, says invitations have doubled in the current year.

Better still as an indication of London's charms for the American GI is the door count at Rainbow Corner, center of the system of soldier clubs set up by the Red Cross throughout the city. Some 25,000 soldier visitors throng its lobbies every day.

To see this great old city as the GI sees it, start with Rainbow Corner. Here the Red Cross centralizes the activities of all enlisted men on pass in London.  

Located just off Piccadilly Circus in the heart of the amusement district, Rainbow Corner is carefully designed for the American taste. Illustrating its appeal is its basement called "Dunker's Den," fitted out as a corner drugstore or Main Street "juke joint." Here gramophone records play the clock around, "Cokes" are served ice-cold for "thrippence," and hot doughnuts tumble from a battery of machines.

Adele Astaire, titled sister of the dancer, sits with other British volunteers behind a table in one corner of the Den, writing letters home for any boys who ask. Another beloved woman does nothing but sew on buttons. War heroines, indefatigable workers, put in eight hours daily in an atmosphere of frying grease and "Pistol Packin' Mama" as a gesture to our servicemen.

Upstairs in Rainbow Corner is a ballroom where volunteer hostesses dance nightly with the Yanks. Elsewhere a floor is devoted to hobbies. There is moist clay for those who wish to model, a piano for impromptu concerts, drawing material for talented fingers. From the drawings of the artful GI's who have sketched here the Red Cross has assembled exhibitions attracting large London crowds. Subjects shown reflect the infinite range of tastes in a citizen's army such as ours, running from scenes of crippled B-17's and antiflak-suited pilots to views of London pubs and landscapes back home.

Rainbow Corner devotes much space to a library of well-thumbed papers from the States, and in one room there is a gramophone restricted to classical music. Passing through one night, I was surprised to find every seat taken by moody music lovers and remarked to my Red Cross escort, "This seems as popular as the jive downstairs."

"Yes," she said, "but they never doze the night on the tables in here as they do by the juke box in the Den."

Rainbow Corner is more than a self-contained entertainment center. It is the American Express and Thomas Cook for our khaki-clad tourist crop of 1944. All soldiers visiting London go to its reception desk for billet assignments. Furnished a bed for the night, they are urged to deposit excess cash in safekeeping to avoid overspending.

At an adjoining desk English girls in the familiar gray of the American Red Cross play expert to the soldiers' "Information Please," on a round-the-clock basis. They never know..."


7” x 10”, 18 pages, 18 B&W photos  

These are pages carefully removed from an actual 1944 magazine.

44I4      

  • Condition: Used
  • date of origin: 1944
  • Type: magazine article
  • Modified Item: No
  • Country/Region of Manufacture: United States
  • Original/Reproduction: Original

PicClick Insights - 1944 US SOLDIERS on leave in LONDON, magazine article, GIs WWII PicClick Exclusive

  •  Popularity - 0 watchers, 0.0 new watchers per day, 263 days for sale on eBay. 0 sold, 1 available.
  •  Best Price -
  •  Seller - 15,940+ items sold. 0% negative feedback. Top-Rated Plus! Top-Rated Seller, 30-day return policy, ships in 1 business day with tracking.

People Also Loved PicClick Exclusive