Is this the REAL American dream??

[John Callon]

Last week I was watching a news broadcast on Long Island Chennal 12 news. An item came on regarding World War 2 veterans and how they were being taken to Washington to see the War Memorial there and pay their respects to their fallen comrades. There was film of them in DC showing children and teenagers along with adults going upto the vets and thanking them for what they did to make the world a safer place. All very laudable, I thought. And then the commentator started his commentary about how our brave American troops freed Europe from the Nazi war machine, how they fought the Japanese in the Pacific (well he got that part right) and defeated them in Burma and Malaysia. By this time he was getting into full swing and extolling the battles our GI's won in North Africa and Italy. He also threw Malta in for good measure, but probably had no idea where in the world Malta is. Next came the diatribe how America changed the face of the earth forever, some may say for the worse. No mention of British, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, Ghurka, South African troops or Merchant Navy seaman. Oh and by the way the RAF got the same treatment - nothing. To say I was outraged at listening to all this crap is an understatement. And then I actually started to feel sorry for this guy. He was probably some jumped up little prick who had a received an education in some Mid West college and was more than likely reading all of this rubbish from an autocue, which made me proud to be British and a former seaman of the British Merchant Navy.
Regards
John

[Lou Barron]

I wonder how much we the UK had to pay the American Goverment after the .We was fighting a war two years before the Americans came into to it with the help of the bombing of Pearl Harbour

[happy daze john in oz]

Not sure how much we paid them Lou but I did hear the total debt was not paid off until many years after the war.

As for the Americans and their war effort, yes it was good, in parts, the parts they were in which was not as some yanks think everywhere.

[robpage]

Congress had not authorized the gift of supplies delivered after the cutoff date, so Washington charged for them, usually at a 90% discount. Large quantities of undelivered goods were in Britain or in transit when Lend-Lease terminated on 2 September 1945. Britain wished to retain some of this equipment in the immediate post war period. In 1946, the post-war Anglo-American loan further indebted Britain to the U.S. Lend-lease items retained were sold to Britain at 10% of nominal value, giving an initial loan value of £1.075 billion for the Lend Lease portion of the post-war loans. Payment was to be stretched out over 50 annual payments, starting in 1951 and with five years of deferred payments, at 2% interest.[33] The final payment of $83.3 million (£42.5 million), due on 31 December 2006 (repayment having been deferred in the allowed five years), was made on 29 December 2006 (the last working day of the year). After this final payment Britain's Economic Secretary to the Treasury, Ed Balls, formally thanked the U.S. for its wartime support.
Tacit repayment of Lend Lease by the British included several valuable technologies, including those related to radar, sonar, jet engines, nuclear weapons, antitank weaponry, rockets, superchargers, gyroscopic gunsights, submarine detection, selfsealing fuel tanks, and plastic explosives. Many of these were transferred by the Tizard Mission. The official historian of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, James Phinney Baxter III, wrote: "When the members of the Tizard Mission brought the cavity magnetron to America in 1940, they carried the most valuable cargo ever brought to our shores

[Louis the Amigo]

Hi Shipmates, Hi John This puts me in mind of two old sayings "All history is bunkum" and the winner writes the history... Only the people who lived then, and seen what happen can tell you the truth...

[happy daze john in oz]

The fact is Lou the truth in many cases is never known. What happened is all decided by the person recording the event, and often that is what they think is occuring not the actual.

[leratty]

Was not the Bahamas part of UK's payment for those supplies in WW2?

[robpage]

the Commonwealth of the Bahamas, is a country consisting of more than 700 islands, cays, and islets in the Atlantic Ocean; north of Cuba and Hispaniola (the Dominican Republic and Haiti); northwest of the Turks and Caicos Islands; southeast of the U.S. state of Florida and east of the Florida Keys. Its capital is Nassau on the island of New Providence. The designation of "Bahamas" can refer to either the country or the larger island chain that it shares with the Turks and Caicos Islands. As stated in the mandate/manifesto of the Royal Bahamas Defence Force, the Bahamas territory encompasses 470,000 km2 (180,000 sq mi) of ocean space.
Originally inhabited by the Lucayan, a branch of the Arawakan-speaking Taino people, the Bahamas were the site of Columbus' first landfall in the New World in 1492. Although the Spanish never colonized the Bahamas, they shipped the native Lucayans to slavery in Hispaniola. The islands were mostly deserted from 1513 until 1648, when English colonists from Bermuda settled on the island of Eleuthera.
The Bahamas became a British Crown colony in 1718, when the British clamped down on piracy. After the American War of Independence, thousands of American Loyalists, taking their enslaved Africans, moved to the Bahamas, where the Americans set up a plantation economy. After Britain abolished the international slave trade in 1807, the Royal Navy resettled many free Africans liberated from illegal slave ships in the Bahamas during the 19th century. Hundreds of American slaves and Black Seminoles escaped to the islands from Florida, and nearly 500 were freed from American merchant ships in the domestic trade. Slavery in the Bahamas was abolished in 1834. Today the descendants of slaves and free Africans form the majority of the population; issues related to the slavery years are part of society. The Bahamas became an independent Commonwealth realm in 1973, retaining Queen Elizabeth II as its monarch.

[Captain Kong]

The Bahamas is also a great place for a vacation.
It is only five hours on the ferry, DISCOVERY, from Fort Lauderdale Florida, also a good trip on that with superb catering and shows, etc.
Hotel Prices are quite good and the Rum is fantastic.

[j.sabourn]

#2... Lend/Lease was the fore runner of Hire Purchase and its high exorbindant interest rates. Think the uk was paying back to US for over 20 years after the war.With all the excuses for keeping the standard of living down. Nowadays I suppose the UK gives more money away free gratis to all more wealthy countries, makes one wonder at times if we dont have slow learners running the country. John S.