Keith was a tailgunner on a Lancaster Bomber towards the end of World War Two. He went to England in April 1944, and for a year he smoked a lot, got in some fights, met some interesting men and women, and waited. This blog is based on the letters he wrote to his mother in 1944-45.
Sunday, 18 November 2012
Oversexed, overpaid, overfed and over here
American soldiers in the UK in the late 1940s had a a terrible reputation. Besides the cliche of being 'oversexed, overpaid, overfed and over here', there were other crude stereotypes such as the one about British girls' knickers ('one Yank and they're off').
Soldiers like Keith, who served in the Royal Canadian Air Force, were identifiably not American because he wore a different uniform. But his style of talking, and the things he talked about, would have made him and his Canadian buddies seem more like Americans.
http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/oversexed-overpaid-and-over-here.html
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