I didn't know this until recently. US troops stationed in Australia during WWII and Aussie troops, got into some serious fracas , called the Battle of Brisbane

The Battle of Brisbane was a riot between United States military personnel on one side and Australian servicemen and civilians on the other, in Brisbane, Queensland's capital city, on 26 and 27 November 1942, during which time the two nations were allies. By the time the violence had been quelled, one Australian soldier was dead and hundreds of Australians and U.S. servicemen had been injured.[1] News reports of these incidents were suppressed overseas, with the causes of the riot not made evident in the few newspaper reports of the event that were published within Australia.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Brisbane

What was the saying the Brits had about US troops in the UK during WWII
Over sexed, over fed and over here

quote:

Originally posted by corsair:
What was the saying the Brits had about US troops in the UK during WWII
Over sexed, over fed and over here

Overpaid, oversexed, and over here.

That Wikipedia article mentions that:

"...U.S. military uniforms were seen as more appealing than those of the Australians..."

What makes that statement interesting is that some US servicemembers stationed in Australia, namely the members of the 1st Marine Division, actually ended up adopting Australian battledress uniform jackets, due to both a lack of availability of US uniforms as well as an attempt at making themselves stand out amongst other US servicemembers.



These became known among Marines as the "Vandegrift jacket", after Major General Alexander Vandegrift, commanding officer of the 1st Marine Division.

A few years later, that Austrialian-style uniform was formally adopted in 1945 and became standard issue across the whole Marine Corps, continuing in use by the Corps through the early 1960s:



So the supposedly "less appealing" Aussie uniform was preferred, and eventually adopted as standard, by the USMC.

If you haven’t watched the mini-series The Pacific, there’s an episode or two dealing with our troop’s experiences being R&R’ed in Australia. It’s an interesting little saga in our shared history. For instance, one of our country’s first serial killers was a serviceman who got caught murdering Australian women while he was billeted there.

The Australians I know amuse me to no end and I can talk to them for hours and they won’t quit, so I’m glad we have a good kinship with that country and those people. But boy, did WWII go a ways towards straining that in a lot of ways.

quote:

Originally posted by houndawg:

quote:

Originally posted by corsair:
What was the saying the Brits had about US troops in the UK during WWII
Over sexed, over fed and over here

Overpaid, oversexed, and over here.

The American response: “Undersexed, underpaid, and under Ike.”

I've heard that to this day, Australian women find the American accent sexy.