A Little Piece of America, Right Here in England

While my parents were here, we took a day trip up to Cambridge.
This is the place of truly brilliant minds and ideas I think there are something like 83 Nobel Prizes among the alumni, which is more than some countries have received. It is where DNA was discovered, where Stephen Hawking lives & teaches, where Isaac Newtown discovered gravity, the atom was split, and where Charles Darwin found his love of natural sciences, leading to the discovery of natural selection. And of course, where Laura & company spent the day. :)

One thing I did not know about Cambridge is that there is an American Military cemetery located there. American soldiers are usually sent back to the US to be buried on home soil. However, during WWII there was such a massive number of soldiers being killed in Europe that this became financially and logistically difficult. So Cambridgeshire donated a sizable plot of land to the USA, making it officially US Soil. A little history, courtesy of Madingley American Cemetery :

The position of the United Kingdom within Europe and in particular it's proximity to Nazi occupied areas of France, the Netherlands and Belgium made it an ideal staging post and logistical hub for the American armed forces that were assigned to combat Nazi Germany during the second world war and the allied invasion of mainland Europe that was to follow. More than two million servicemen and women and 17 million tonnes of cargo passed through the United Kingdom during world war two.

Britain's success as a logistical centre for the allied operations in Europe was in no small part achieved by the heroic actions of British and United States Merchant and Naval Sailors who fought daily battles against the German U Boats between 1939 and 1945.

As the war in Europe progressed, airfields in Britain were both expanded and constructed to facilitate additional United States air force bombers and fighters that were to support the RAF in their bombing campaigns against enemy positions throughout Europe. The first American bombing raid staged from Great Britain took place in 1942 and by the end of the war over five hundred thousand bombing missions had taken place.

By the end of 1942 American troops were involved in fighting in North Africa and within six months, the enemy their had surrendered. Operations against enemy targets in the Mediterranean resulted in allied landings in Sicily and Italy. In June 1944 allied troops entered Rome and the events of the D-Day landings in Normandy commenced which combined with Russian offensive against Germany eventually resulted in the overwhelming defeat of Nazi Germany and it's eventual surrender.

The American contribution to the war effort came at a great price. Total American Military World War II casualties exceeded 290,000 and over 600,000 wounded. Many of those buried at Madingley American Cemetery are the crews of British based United States Air Force heavy bomber crews, some died in combat in the North Africa campaign, other in the Mediterranean areas of Europe, the North Atlantic and the training grounds in and around the United Kingdom.



(not my photo)

There are over 3800 soldiers buried here, and there is a wall of the missing for soldiers whose remains were never found, with 5000+ names on this wall. On this wall are three famous people: Joseph Kennedy Jr. (JFK's older brother, who likely would have inherited the family's pressure to run for office), Glenn Miller, the band leader, & well, I forgot the third one. But he is someone famous, take my word for it.