John Steinbeck – War Correspondent – England, 1943

John Steinbeck arrived in England in June 1943, and by the year’s end was back in the US, but his observations of the American soldier coming to terms with a very foreign land and a foreign people are some of the best pieces of wartime writing – and travel writing – committed to paper. He writes, on June 19th, 1943:

” Our troops approaching England are told in pamphlets what the British are like, where they are tender and where hard, what words, innocent at home, are harsh and ugly on the British ear. This has much the same effect as telling a friend, ‘You must meet Jones – wonderful fellow. You two will get along.’ With a start like that, Jones has got two strikes on him before you ever meet him. He has to live down being a charming fellow before you can tolerate him. In this case it is even worse, because the British are told that they will like us when they just get to know us. The result is that the two come together like strange dogs, each one looking for trouble.”

The piece, written for the New York Herald Tribune, goes on to look at the absurdities encountered when two peoples who speak pretty much the same language are thrown together, with both sides using pre-conceived ideas as a form of self-defence and a means of explaining one to the other why he, the American, is in England, and, for the Brit, why he – the American – feels he ought to be there (most don’t of course) when they – the Brits – have got on perfectly well without them before and don’t really need them now, knowing full well they – the Brits – do need them but couldn’t possibly admit it, especially when it feels a bit like an invasion in itself. In other words it’s all a bit mixed up emotionally with the British already having endured four years of war, which has made them, as a nation, somewhat weary, a situation enhanced by the energy and freshness of the new arrivals who are wearing smarter uniforms, have more money, and seem – are to some extent – so much more sophisticated, even if, for many American soldiers, this is their first trip outside their home county where their level of sophistication was drinking a bottle of Coca Cola and going to a movie.