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Following Steve Roat's highly acclaimed contribution on the Americans in Bungay, this amazing story from Flixton has come to light thanks to material kindly supplied by Miss Eileen Stone, now retired headmistress of Flixton Primary School.

The story concerns Jimmy Seery, a member of United States Air Force, who was responsible for the 707th Bomb Squadron auto pilot and bombsight workshop.

In 1944, Jimmy Seery, a young airman stationed at Flixton was, one day startled by a shot gun, later discovered to be that of a poacher. During the same day Jimmy found an old Prince Albert tobacco tin containing some coins among which was a Bungay halfpenny. This had a caricature of Bungay Castle on one side and the scales of Justice on the other and was one of the items that Jimmy took back with him to the United States at the end of the war.

However, after 30 years he wanted to find out how much Flixton had changed, so he wrote a letter that found its way to Eileen, the headmistress at the time of Flixton Primary School. In fact the school was only 100 yards from where the coin was originally found.

Eileen passed the letter to the local 8th Air Force historian, John Archer of Earsham who wrote to Jimmy with all the latest information. Jimmy mentioned the Bungay halfpenny and offered it to the school on condition that some of Miss Stone's pupils wrote to him to tell him about themselves, their school and the village so the children busied themselves with this project, eventually sending a book to Jimmy Seery.

Jimmy was the Editor of the 'El Paso Times' in New Mexico and the story of his links with Flixton and extracts from some of the letters were published in the newspaper. He kept in touch with the school, sending letters and cards to all the pupils that had written to him and on May Day in 1976 the children enjoyed a tea party courtesy of Jimmy. He kindly donated some money that was used to buy refreshments for a May Day party when the children enjoyed games and crowned Katrina Boothby as the May Queen and Stephen Catling as the May King. There was also enough money left for the children to choose a book each from the school book club to which they belonged as a memento of Jimmy Seery or 'Uncle Jim' as he was fondly known.

In May 1977 the children were preparing to welcome Jimmy Seery, returning for his first visit since the war and although some of the children had left to go to Bungay Middle School, they still wanted to be part of the celebrations. Fate dealt a very cruel blow.

In the early hours of the morning, Eileen received a telephone call from John Archer. Jimmy's parents had contacted him and said that Jimmy would not be visiting after all. Whilst on his way, he had suffered a stroke at the airport in Chicago where he was due to change aircraft and although he was rushed to hospital he never recovered. He was only 54 years old.

Flowers and cards were sent to his parents in America from the pupils at Flixton.

Jimmy's parents donated a further sum of money to the school and a box of presents in his memory. The money was used to provide each child with a silver spoon to commemorate the Queen's Silver Jubilee, for a Christmas party, books for each child and the remainder was used for a notice board which was dedicated to Jimmy’s memory by the Rev Frank Fuller, then Vicar of Bungay.

The Bungay halfpenny is now kept in the Museum at Bungay.

The story does not end there. One of Eileen’s closest friends is Sylvia, the daughter of 'Skill' Bedwell, a man who gained a reputation for supplying pheasants to the military and Sylvia remembers that 'Skill' always kept in his pocket, a Prince Albert tobacco tin in which he kept loose change, bits and pieces and various bits of treasure he found that would fit in it.......

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