Most of the wartime flying in our area was carried out by the 8th United States Army Air Force (USAAF) with only a small cluster of nearby RAF stations, while the Suffolk Regiment had its depot at the Gibraltar Barracks in Out Risbygate, Bury St Edmunds. Blenheim Camp was also in the same road but further out of town. By 1945 there were a range of facilities for servicemen open in Bury St Edmunds. There were various cafés and teashops as well as the official or voluntary providers.
In his book Suffolk Summer John Appleby described the following places. The Forces Study Centre was in Chequer Square, diagonally across from the Norman Tower, "in a pleasant house of rambling passages and old oak beams." It was operated by the British Army Educational Corps with at least one good concert a week, classes in French and German, carpentry, woodwork and toymaking, a play reading group and discussion groups. At weekends excursions were arranged and troops and townspeople alike used these facilities.
The Salvation Army had a canteen in Abbeygate Street open all hours for tea and sandwiches. The YMCA hostel also served tea in the garden.
The people of Bury St Edmunds ran their own Sunday afternoon Canteen in the Athenaeum on Angel Hill for the troops. Committees of volunteers provided teas, sandwiches and cakes, and a lending library and mending service occupied a corner each of the ballroom. According to Appleby the fare was the best in Bury and you could eat your fill for under a shilling. In today's money this is 5 pence, but must be related to wages of the day, when a workman might get £5 a week. American service pay was well over three times the English, and their rations were far more generous and diverse. Chocolate bars, sweets and chewing gum were liberally distributed to any civilians the Americans encountered. Stricter parents forbade their offspring to ask for sweets and often frowned on any contact at all. The Athenaeum Canteen closed in September 1945, but it is interesting to note that then, just as today, visitors wrestled with its pronunciation and "Athenium" was mainly used by the troops.
Appleby records that these places welcomed troops of all nationalities, whereas the US Red Cross Clubs barred British servicemen unless guests of Americans. The American Red Cross Officer's Club in Bury was in Westgate Street, facing up Guildhall Street.
British soldiers might use the Church Army Canteen in St Botolphs Lane, which is now a Suffolk Housing Association housing scheme, or the British Restaurant in Crown Street where there is now a yard for the Brewery.
The Royal Corps of Signals had a signal office in a house on Southgate Green, now demolished by the roadworks in that area. Dispatch riders went from there all over East Anglia emphasising the fact that local telephone communications were rudimentary as well as insecure. The men were billeted in homes in Southgate Street and around.
On the agricultural front some Land Army women were billeted in a house on Southgate Green. Prisoners of War were housed on Hardwick Heath in a makeshift camp, and after the war were put to work on local farms. Italians built the concrete roads for the newly planned Mildenhall Road Estate.
The elegant Queen Ann house known as Angel Corner housed the Ministry of Food during the war, although it was responsible for rationing it out, rather than producing it. In 1946 it became the local Civil Defence HQ for Area 14 (most of West Suffolk) and in the 1960s its cellars were used as the Emergency Planning Centre.
