DFA Staff Pick: Gone But Not Forgotten

To mark the 80th Anniversary of the end of the Second World War later this year, the DFA Staff Pick for March is ‘Johnny Doughboy: The G.I.s in Northern Ireland,’ an engaging 25 minute programme from 1982 which, through interviews and archive footage, recollects the experiences of the Northern Irish population in the early 1940’s when they suddenly found themselves unwittingly hosting 250,000 U.S. Servicemen stationed in Northern Ireland as part of the build up to D-Day in 1944.

On the face of it, this is the familiar story of two cultures – in this case, from opposite sides of the Atlantic - being thrown together by circumstances and learning to happily coexist (albeit for just a couple of years), as seen through the eyes of the indigenous Northern Irish population. Needless to say, all the usual tropes of cultural adjustment that one might expect to find in such a programme are present, such as the locals being introduced to the US imports of chewing gum and baseball, and the almost inevitable ‘NI girl meets GI Doughboy’ love story. However, through the clipped ‘Received English’ tones of its narrator, Brian Baird, the informed (if slightly stilted) pieces-to-camera of Historian, Ian Henderson, and the deft use of contemporary interviews and archive footage and photos, the programme cleverly uses what, at first sight, might seem to be just a string of nostalgic anecdotes to subliminally remind us of the strong ties the UK has with and the great debt the free world owes to the United States. 

A sentiment which Ian Henderson skilfully underscores in his poignant - and, it has to be said, slightly wistful - closing piece-to-camera outside Belfast City Hall.

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