Buckden - a Huntingdonshire Village

FRIENDLY INVASIONS 200 services, though there is no record of their ever having taken a Sunday school class ! Van Horne even has the temerity to challenge the local darts team, and holds his own pretty well. “I carry my own darts,” he said, pulling them out of his pocket and exhibiting them with pride. “But it’s real hard to beat Pop Peacock or Mr. Bull here— they’re experts. Whoever loses the game buys the drinks—I’ve never got good enough yet to get all my beer for free in one night !” Tetrault commented upon their early embarrassment at accepting the hospitality of the English, because of the rationing difficulties. “However, I’ve eaten two Christmas dinners with Mr. and Mrs. King,” he told us. “They would have been really hurt if we hadn’t accepted.” And now, after two-and-a-half years, this phase of life has drawn to a close for Van Horne, Tetrault and countless others. Not only in Buckden, but all over England, in a thousand English towns and villages, the Yanks are going home. And, as each American says good-bye, kissing his English “mum,” and tweaking the ear as he hands out the last bit of gum to his adopted kid brother or sister, he mutters, being rather inarticulate, “Well, thanks a lot, folks.” And the family replies “You’re welcome !” PAT PATERSON The author was almost certainly Valerie ‘Pat’ Paterson (c. 1911-1997), an English freelance journalist, raised in Canada. After the war she moved to the USA and became a respected editor and accomplished photographer. She married Frederick G. Vosburgh, a future editor of the National Geographic magazine. Seven photographs illustrated this article, taken by Francis Reiss; unfortunately he was not on the magazine’s staff at the time, and they cannot be reproduced. Among them are pictures of Mr and Mrs Charles Peacock, ‘Tiger’ King, and the two GIs in Church Street, handing out gum to a group of boys. This chapter has been edited, primarily by Robin Gibson, from the recollections of Alan Cockburn, Robert Curtis, William Medhurst, Ken Odell, Alec Owen, Harold Randall and David Rhodes, and from research by Raymond Cave. Old Tollingtonians have lodged some 30,000 words of reminiscence with Buckden Local History Society, which hopes to publish them in book form; whether it does or not, it will ensure the material is placed in the Huntingdonshire Archives.