During World War II tens of thousands of young American airmen were sent over the Atlantic to Great Britain to participate in the liberation of Europe.
The air war was ruthless with hundreds of thousands of victims on both sides.
After being hit by shells from air defence or fighters, without any chance to reach the home base,
some crews tried to reach a land in the north, a land where the war had never reached.
They were so young when they came.
So innocent and fun-loving.
When the Americans came to the village
The towns and villages that they came to lived up.
Malmö, Stockholm, Falun and Västerås ...
but also smaller places like Mullsjö and Gränna ...
Grästorp and Loka Brunn.
And little Rättvik, of course.
A day on the slopes, so far from all that has been.
It was difficult to penetrate the carefree exterior ...
to understand what they had been through.
The small towns of course remain.
As well as the cafés and folk parks.
Camp road
Other things have withered away over time.
Like the camps they first arrived to.
This place may not look like much now ...
but it is an important place in the story of Sweden during World War II.
This is Främby internment camp just outside Falun.
In the spring of 1940 a number of allied soldiers flee from Norway to Sweden.
The Swedish government needs somewhere to place them, to intern them.
The choice falls on Främby.
Here a number of barracks were quickly built: personnel barracks for 50 men ...
kitchen barracks, guard barracks, etc.
The penalty barrack was a very unpopular place.
This will eventually also be a center for the Allied airmen ...
that were housed here after crashing or emergency landing in Sweden.
There are British and Canadians and even some Australians ...
but it's the American airmen who are noticed.
They are smartly dressed in leather jackets and baseball caps.
They are open and generous, and pays for both movies and café.
They bring with them strange new sports like baseball and american football.
Children gets their first taste of chewing gum.
When they are finished they put the chewing gum in sugar water for use the next day.
The camp bunks were soon exchanged for hotel beds.
There are still those who remember how it happened when the airmen arrived.
They just came falling down.
I attended last year in the girls' school in Falun when I was 19 years old.
It was a big event in small Falun ...
and even greater here in Korsnäs, as it was called then.
Here, not much happened. Suddenly the whole countryside lived up.
There came more and more airmen ...
to be interned in three places: Boarding house Solliden ...
Näs Manor boarding house and Humlebacken.
-There was dancing in the folk park.
-Yes, performances and dancing.
Falun had a larger folk park, but our here in Korsnäs was well liked.
I lived 200-300 meters from the folk park.
It was easy to slip in.
Me and one of the Americans visited the folk park in Falun when Alice Babs was there.
She wondered if someone could teach her jitterbug.
This boy could.
She called us up behind the stage and asked to dance with him.
So I have met Alice Babs. She was my idol.
-Some girls got married to American boys.
-Yes, there were a few.
I had a classmate by the name Inga Dahlström.
She married an American who lived at Humlebacken.
He lived in Texas. There she ended up.
This is the farewell party for her in her garden.
Here I sit, her mother, a few friends and a girl who worked at Solliden.
-Did many girls from Falun marry Americans?
-Yes, it was quite a lot.
Yes, there was both marriage and a life on the other side of the Atlantic ...
for some Swedish girls.
Others were left to give birth to a child in solitude.
Some of the children have searched for their missing fathers during a whole life.
-Well, Janet, you are one of these "airmen children".
-Yes I am.
I am the daughter of Donovan Grivetti.
He was bombardier and was shot at on his 33rd mission, as it was called.
They first landed in Kalmar and were then sent to Rättvik.
In Rättvik mom worked at the Klingberg café.
There many Americans were during evenings. And there they met.
-And the result was you, Janet.
-Yes, I was the result.
My mom was from Mora, but worked in Rättvik.
I understand they met at the café in the evenings.
The boys were lovely in leather jackets and with cigarettes and chewing gum.
They must have been very popular. Many children probably came to be there during that time.
I grew up with my maternal grandparents, because mom went to America.
I have always known that my dad was in America. I longed very much while growing up.
I tried to locate him, I emigrated to America, but never managed to find him.
I tried through the Salvation Army, but they didn't want to help.
I got my chance in 1987, when there was a reunion in Västerås.
I tried to get in contact. But he was not there.
The visit to Västerås was an experience. We walked around and looked.
I saw how the old ladies looked at me very suspiciously.
I was in the wrong age, or the right age. They saw me as an intruder.
Donovan Grivetti remained a shadow.
But in Västerås she met the old American airman and private detective Jim McMann.
He went in with his big heart and said that if he did not find my dad, he would be my dad.
Jim managed to find my dad in the end.
He called one evening and said he had the address and telephone number.
But I thought it was dad's chance if he wanted to have contact at all.
So I asked Jim to call dad first. Then dad called and it felt amazing.
So I sat down and wrote a very long letter and told him about my life and that we wanted to visit him.
My husband Bengt booked a trip at once. Because dad was already old back then.
Ten days later we sat on the plane to Los Angeles.
There, we were reunited. Last evening at home I received a letter from dad with a picture of him.
So I knew what he looked like. Bengt spotted him at once at the airport. We were quite similar.
It felt amazing. Really lovely!
Our reunion was amazing of course. There was much that bubbled up.
That we were so alike in our movements and our appearance was fantastic.
My dad's been dead for four years now and my mom only since half a year.
But I have all the old photos here now, so I can... see what he looked like.
His fine old hat or whatever you call it.
Pictures from the legation where he worked at Strandvägen.
His flights paraphernalia, shrapnel from the shelling ...
and his buddies on the streets of Stockholm.
There were born many Janets those years... and even the occasional Jimmy.
In the moral panic of Sweden mean couplets were sung about the meetings of the girls and American airmen.
The children were therefore often named something else, perhaps Britta or Rolf.
But Gurli Hansson was not ashamed of her meeting with the American airman Jimmy Brady.
After Jimmy was sent back to the war, she gave their son the same name as his father.
Jimmy Brady had no more children. As an old man he gathered his courage ...
and returned to Sweden to meet his son, Jimmy Hansson.
The last time in an urn.
His life companion Gisela from Hamburg brought it ...
to small Hällaryd in Blekinge.
You are holding a US flag, Jimmy. Can you tell us a bit about it?
All war veterans who die in America gets an American flag like this.
So also my father of course. Gisela thought that I should have it.
It came along when she arrived with the urn.
A German woman from the bombed to pieces Hamburg ...
takes the ashes of her American husband to his Swedish son in Blekinge.
Somehow also this is a small piece of the puzzle of the history of the war.
Some children wore their alienation within themselves.
Others were reminded of it every day because they did not look like their friends.
I grew up in a rural village with grandmother, mother and many relatives.
The men just came home for weekends, so the world was dominated by women.
My father was of Native American origin, which showed on me.
No one spoke about him. They wanted to protect me.
Perhaps they worried that the US government would claim me.
When I asked they explained he was dead, that he had died in a plane crash. It was what everyone thought.
But I knew that it was not so. I had seen him. He sat by my bed and spoke to me in a dream.
Years passed. When I had turned ten years, I found a cigarette case among my mothers things.
In it someone had carved an address in America.
I remember it still: Wilson Avenue, San Diego, USA.
I didn't know any English, but I still wrote a letter.
I wrote that I understood that the address was to him and that I existed.
I wrote to my father that I had seen him in my dreams and that I knew he was live.
Some time later, a letter arrived with nice stamps.
But I already knew. He had been sitting by my bed.
It had to be enough for now. Not until I had children of my own, I went over.
My daughter Charlotte came along and we had a lovely time with my father, her grandfather.
My father was born in Arizona and had spent much time with the Apaches there, hunted with them.
I got to experience the Native American culture for real. It was amazing.
My father died in 1984, but I have kept the Native American culture and the spiritual all my life.
I myself am a Native American to a certain extent, although I grew up in Sweden.
They are all gone now - all except one man.
His name is Bob Birmingham. He is back to experience it all again, one last time.
The airmen seemed to be everywhere. We had two crews at the same time - 20 men.
Our boarding house had 22 rooms, two lounges, a large dining room and two smaller.
The boys were well-mannered and  took care of each other.
I remember one had problems with his nerves and screamed at night.
His comrades took turns to be with him, day and night.
We only had problems with the airmen when the local boys offered them moonshine. Then they became ill.
The radio was always on and they followed the war developments on large maps on the walls.
On the maps they stuck colorful needles that they moved around when the front changed.
We had a long table at the front of the dining room where they ate.
They would rather have steak, but they understood that there was coupons for everything.
Mom was often despairing, but always managed to make ends meet somehow.
Sometimes we had to fool the rationing board.
The airmen amused themselves with building model airplanes, playing cards and reading.
They played pingpong, basketball and tennis.
Sometimes we organized sleigh rides in the evenings or dancing on Lake Siljan's ice.
But most often they went to the folk park or the hotel and met girls.
I know director Asp had a hard time ensuring that no girls accompanied them up to the rooms.
It was probably the most fun time of my life.
The boys happiness rubbed off on us.
It was a great sadness when they disappeared. One of them said to me before he left:
"I hope I will find a girl like you in America, Ebba. Then I will be happy."
Words you'll never forget.
It will be a long afternoon by Lake Siljan.
Bob has a hard time saying goodbye to the friends.
But there is one more place he wants to see, one last time.
The first "flying fortress" emergency landings in Sweden is in the summer of 1943.
But it is the following years that the bombers come in greater numbers.
By that time the winds of war have turned.
Pilots from the Swedish Air Force helps guide the distressed planes down.
You have a lot to talk about afterwards, even if it is difficult to understand each other.
The Americans are flying during daytime, and are therefore very vulnerable.
Everything culminates on 20 and 21 June, 1944.
No less than 33 flying fortresses and B-24's crashes or makes emergency landings in Sweden.
The spectacular nose art causes sensation.
But the superficial swagger is mainly a way to keep the horror and fear away.
Now they get to rest a few months in the country the war never reached ...
where the hay in the meadow is harvested in peace and quiet.
Also many British and German pilots found their way to Sweden.
When the emergency landing didn't show any signs of slowing down ...
a special team was put together to take care of the planes.
Olle Branäs, you are the only one remaining from the MVH Group during the war.
Tell us... what was the MVH Group?
It was a new section in the Airforce materiel agency.
It was the last year of the war when the Americans had many big bomb drops over Germany.
It started to come too many damaged planes that emergency landed everywhere in Sweden.
Especially at Bulltofta.
There was no one who took care of this. The Air Force Wings did not have time.
Then MVH was formed.
You traveled around and took care of these planes.
The concentration was actually at Bulltofta.
There came planes everywhere, in Ronneby and ...
But we had the largest concentration in Skåne.
And Bulltofta became... almost full with planes.
We had no room on Bulltofta and had to move to... the small Sövde field in Sjöbo.
You worked a lot with the Americans during the war.
Yes, the Americans who were interned at various places among others Loka Brunn and Rättvik.
Those who were engineers got to come down to Bulltofta.
We had a good cooperation with ABA / SILA there and their technical training.
They helped with picking parts from a scrap yard that we had there ...
and then these 40-50 guys renovated the planes.
How was the American boys at Bulltofta?
They were very nice boys. They had lived in an internment camp ...
and then they came to Malmö and were lodgers with families where they rented rooms.
They got to live completely freely. We hung out a lot in the evenings.
And of course, on Saturday nights, we were all at Amiralen and danced.
Even in Malmö sweet music arose when girl met boy.
Meetings that would never have taken place, and children who would never had been born ...
if it were not for the terrible things that were going on.
Small glimpses of light in a dark time.
The love stories between the American airmen and Swedish girls was of various kinds.
Sometimes it was a short-lived romance but quite often it was deep, heartfelt love.
Here in Rinkaby outside Kristianstad was one of the busiest emergency landing fields for American bombers.
Today it does not look like much but 1944-1945 there was a tremendous activity here at Rinkaby airfield.
On May 29, 1944 the US Army Air Force mounts a massive raid ...
against German oil refineries and aircraft factories.
A large numer of planes are shot down or damaged by German fighters and German air defense.
Some of these planes tries to save themselves - seriously damaged - to Sweden.
Here to Rinkaby comes two B-24's.
One of these two planes that makes an emergency landing here at Rinkaby field...
is piloted by the 23-year-old Edwin Reinhold Peterson.
Or rather Edwin Reinhold Pettersson.
He is of Swedish descent. He is called Pete Peterson.
Pete's plane is incredibly badly damaged. There's only one engine that works.
They have wounded on board.
But Pete Peterson manages to bring his huge B-24 down on Rinkaby field.
Pete remains in Sweden until the end of the war.
When he finally goes home to the US, he is not traveling alone.
He has someone with him.
She wasn't easy to find. And the road there was long.
But we thought she probably would be worth a trip.
-We'll take it in Swedish.
-Then we'll tell them to shut up.
Well, Kerstin, then we are sitting on Hillcrest Drive in Boise, Idaho.
When you were a small girl in Halmstad could you imagine that you would live here i Idaho?
Never in my entire life! I would never have imagined.
-But you knew what America was?
-I had an idea.
-But not much more than that?
-No. We had no family there. Or anyone else.
I remember there was a big exhibition in New York.
Our teachers would go to America. It was like the end of the world for us.
You never heard about someone who went there.
There were no airlines. Everyone had to travel by boat.
I understand your parents ran a store in Halmstad.
Yes, a grocery store... he had two grocery stores in Halmstad.
Then the war came. How did it change life in Halmstad?
We got blackout. If one were to meet a boyfriend, you had to ...
if they were going back to the regiment, you had to walk home alone in the dark.
All the windows and everything had to be darkened.
There were not many cars. My boyfriend had a very fancy car. But he had no wheels and no gasoline.
We just sat in the car sometimes. The military took all car tires and such at the time.
There were many flyovers at night?
You heard some, but not much. And they fired, they fired.
We were neutral, so we have to shoot at any plane that flew over.
But they... didn't try to hit the plane or something like that. They just had to shoot.
This with rationing and such - was it something that affected your life?
It wasn't so bad. We had coupons and there was almost everything you needed.
It wasn't so bad. Except meat. You didn't get much meat.
I know mom made meatballs of fish, you understand. It was fine.
On June 20, 1944, the war came really close to Kerstin's hometown.
Two damaged planes circles over the town.
The town's civilian airport is too small and the disaster is close.
But somehow it works out.
That two big bombers hinders the traffic on a small civilian field is not ideal of course.
So the American legation sent for Pete Peterson and his men to remove the planes.
It is here somewhere that Kerstin's trip to America begins.
There was... dancing in Tylösand. I got to dance with him then.
We started talking and then we dated for several months afterwards.
What did your parents think of the foreign airman that was courting you?
They liked him, but they couldn't talk to him. They didn't know a word of English. Neither mom or dad.
My siblings could talk to him. They liked him.
He had a special charm, and could "charm anybody". So they liked him.
-There were some cultural clashes.
-That's right.
Tylösand has a nice beach. They wondered how far it was. "It's just a mile."
"That's nothing." They they had bikes they would ride there.
But they did not think about that one Swedish mile is six English miles.
So they rode there, but took a taxi back to Halmstad.
Hitler is dead
Berlin captured
Peace in Europe
Peace in Europe - Norway free
Wed
In June 1945, when there was peace in the world again there was finally a wedding.
There was a textile rationing at the time. It created problems if one would sew a wedding dress.
-But you solved it in a rather nice way.
-Oh yes.
My future husband came home with a parachute.
He wanted me to make a dress from it. "You can not."
It is a lot of small pieces in a parachute. But it went fine. She sewed it out of all the parts.
At the time, dresses went up here. Nowadays bride dresses have much less fabric.
It was really good. I still have it.
Eventually there came a move to America.
It must have been a very big step to take for a young girl at that time.
Oh yes.
How did it feel when you stood there on the boat?
It was in Bergen in Norway.
It was the first trip after the war.
The Germans had used the boat for troop transports.
It wasn't in such good condition. But it was the first trip.
It took some... nine days, or whatever it was, to get over.
Mines were laid in the sea, so we had to go slowly.
They were afraid that the boat would be destroyed, but it went fine.
You're 93 years now, Kerstin.
When you look back on your life, do you ever regret that you took the leap across the Atlantic?
No, never. I have never regretted it. I thrive in America.
It is easier to socialize here.
In Sweden, it would always be in a particular way. You had to offer food to guests.
Here people are more easygoing to socialize with.
The people are very nice.
-So you've had a good life here in America?
-Yes, I have had many friends.
Most of my friends are gone now, but you can't do anything about that.
There are many memories and laughs during the afternoon ...
but in the end we must say goodbye to the Peterson family.
There on the steps of the house in Boise, Idaho ...
where love once brought a young girl from Halmstad.
There was a time when the Grand flew the German flag - but times are changing.
When Bob Birmingham returns to Falkenberg after 70 years the hotel flies the American flag.
Bob is a very old man now, and a dear friend since many years.
It's difficult to ask certain questions - but they have to be asked.
What did he feel when he dropped the bombs on the people down there?
They were so young when they came.
So innocent and fun-loving.
And it is difficult to understand what they had been through.
