American Soldier Befriends Him!

They give us our first leave and we went to Paris from Germany. We were in Paris there and everything so we was in this café and we were in there talking so I got up and went to the washroom and when I come back there’s a white American soldier sitting there with him, my buddy Gerald. So I come and I sat down and this American looked at me and he says, “What are you doing boy, what are you doing sitting here? ” I said, “Because this is my seat, this is my drink there!” “You can’t sit here with us!” My buddy Gerald says, “Hmm, the one that will be moving will be you, not him, the person that will move is you, not my buddy, this is my buddy!”And so he hemmed and hawed and turned to him and said, “You either go or...” And then he asked if he could stay. He said, “Yes, you can stay!” So we sat there and we drank and we travelled, he wanted to know if he could go travelling with us so I said, “Yeah”, so we went down and we walked around for a while and went and had some lunch. He sat down at the table with us started talking, that’s when he told me there. He said, “You know you’re the first coloured man that I sat and talked to in my life,” he says, “when I go home I’m going to tell my mother and father that.” He said, “I feel right proud,” he said, “ You’re just like the rest of us!” I said, “I’ve grown up like the rest of yahs!”