"They Have Left the Farm."

In this sequel to "My Grandfather's Farm," published the year before, also in the Royal Air Force Journal, Bates writes that "the Americans are packing up" and the land is coming back.

He refers to the "invasion" of the Americans, their numerous marriages to English women, and their deaths in battle, as a revolution. He writes of the stages of English acceptance of the Americans — excitement, curiosity, suspicion, slight resentment, and "the traditional English slow-opening reserve"," followed by increasing understanding that both peoples shared a common enemy and common goal. He notes how American pilots over time adopted some of the restraint and mannerisms of R.A.F. pilots, and finally, he contemplates the long-term effect of this cultural exchange, concluding that the strongest link will be in memory: "With us it will long be wondered at, talked about, valued and remembered. It will become a legend."

Printed in This Week Magazine (with title "GI's Won the British!"), a Sunday supplement distributed with many US newspapers including The New York Herald Tribune (September 16, 1945, p. SM9), with a photograph similar to the twenty-nine photographs taken for the earlier essay 'My Grandfather's Farm.' Although the photograph used in This Week Magazine has not been found, a sister photograph (lacking cattle) to the one printed in the magazine is shown below. Both photographs are from Burton Bradstock in Dorset and thus have no connection to the subject of the essay, the George Lucas farm in the Midlands.

Reprinted in the Royal Air Force Journal (December 1945, iii, 12, pp. 456-458, attached).