Run by the Red Cross, Rainbow Corner had cafes and restaurants (including Dunker’s Den), laundry, barbers, showers, rooms for use by American servicemen on leave. Eleanor Roosevelt closed it.



Robert S Arbib remembered:

‘The centre of London on a Saturday night was Piccadilly Circus… It had soldiers, sailors and airmen in uniform, looking for fun. Americans, British, French, Canadians, Norse, Poles, Belgians, Czechs, Dutch – you could run down a roster of Allied nations and find all their representatives here in a moment or two. The Americans surged in a never-ending tide around the Rainbow Corner – milling their way in and out of that mammoth beehive, in search of friends, food, dancing, of an hour’s sleep before the train left, or of a bed for the night.’ (Martin Bowman, We're Here to Win the War For You: The US 8th Air Force at War, p.236)