Pining for the West

I had a look at my AA book of places to visit in Britain and I saw that they recommended Madingley near Cambridge because of the World War II cemetery. It’s the only World War II American military cemetery in the UK and the land was donated by the University of Cambridge, it covers 30.5 acres. It’s staffed by friendly and informative people. You can read about it here.

At one point there were 3 million Americans in Britain and sadly 3,812 of them ended up here. Some of them would have been involved in that disastrous training accident in Cornwall.

There are 80 Stars of David in the cemetery, you can just see one of them in the photo below. I must admit that I prefer the British military plain headstones, for one thing there’s a lot more room on them for information. These ones only have name, number and state whereas the British ones have name,regiment, age and a space below for the family to add a sentiment of their own. Mind you when you see that their ages are usually about 19 it can be quite depressing. I saw a 15 year old in a French cemetery, a drummer boy from Durham, I didn’t even realise it was legal to have ‘men’ out there so young.

The whole place is beautifully cared for and is well planted with double pink hawthorn trees, tulip trees, catalpa, beech, oak and sweet gum as well as box hedging, roses and lots more small plants. I loved the espaliered pyracanthas which are looking great at the moment.

To the left hand side of the photo below you can see the massive memorial wall which is inscribed with the names and particulars of 5,127 people who are missing, their remains never having been found.

Below is a stitch of the land which is adjacent to the North Entrance, it’s very flat farmland but as you can see, the cemetery is nicely situated in a rural and peaceful setting. It’s a long way for any American relatives to visit but even in October there were a few graves with flowers and flags on them.

If you’re at all into that era or military history then you’ll find this an interesting if sad place to visit. It’s just so awful that there are still youngsters losing their lives in the name of freedom, politicians never seem to learn.

It wasn’t until after I left that I realised that there’s just a possibility that one of my many uncles pulled some of these poor souls out of the English Channel as he was in the RAF – Air Sea Rescue and spent most of his time soaking wet and freezing, which is how he got the chronic bronchitis which killed him at an early age too. He had been determined not to go into the army after hearing horror stories of his father’s experiences in the trenches. He would probably have been better off just waiting for his army call up.