September 2023 Itinerary

 September 2023 Itinerary

On August 31^st, I will depart the Merseyside/Liverpool area for Yorkshire, England. I am really excited to spend a week in York, and to visit all of the historical sights that it has to offer. As mentioned earlier, I won’t get to visit very many places North of York during this trip, due to my “limited” time in England. Leaving York, I will make my way down south to Lincoln and Derby, eventually winding up in Birmingham for another week. 

Birmingham is the second largest city in England, and there should be plenty of things to do. When I post pictures of my map and route, I failed to mention what the different colored pins represent. Blue pins are castles and manor houses where I have had ancestors live. Green pins are associated with religious sights, such as Chapels, Churches, cemeteries, Abbeys, Cathedrals, or Priories. Red pins are towns where my ancestors have either lived, died, or worked. Yellow pins are historical locations that I want to visit, but they have no significant relationship to my family history (Stonehenge, Battlefields, Mayflower locations), and white pins are places where I plan to spend the night.  

As my trip starts to return back to the London area, I also plan on visiting some military sites. South of Windsor is the Brookwood American Cemetery, the only American Military Cemetery of World War I in the British Isles.(https://www.abmc.gov/Brookwood). The 4.5 acre Brookwood American Cemetery and Memorial in England lies to the west of the large civilian cemetery built by the London Necropolis Co. and contains the graves of 468 of our military dead. Close by are military cemeteries and monuments of the British Commonwealth and other allied nations. Within the American cemetery the headstones are arranged in four plots, grouped around the flagpole. Brookwood American Cemetery contains the graves of 468 American war dead, including the graves of 41 unknown servicemen, from World War I. The regular rows of white marble headstones on the smooth lawn are framed by masses of shrubs and evergreen trees which form a perfect setting for the chapel, a classic white stone building on the north-end of the cemetery. The interior of the chapel is of tan-hued stone. Small, stained-glass windows light the altar and flags and the carved cross. On the walls within the chapel are inscribed the names of 564 of the missing soldiers.

Another cemetery I plan on visiting while near Cambridge in October is the Cambridge American Cemetery and Memorial site in England, 30.5 acres in total. It lies on a slope with the west and south sides framed by woodland. The cemetery contains the remains of 3,811 of our war dead; 5,127 names are recorded on the Walls of the Missing. Rosettes mark the names of those since recovered and identified. Most died in the Battle of the Atlantic or in the strategic air bombardment of northwest Europe.

From the flagpole platform near the main entrance, the great mall with its reflecting pools stretches eastward. It is from the mall that the wide, sweeping curve of the burial area across the lawn is best appreciated. Along the south side are the Walls of the Missing, and at the far end is the memorial with a chapel, two huge military maps, stained glass windows bearing the state seals and military decorations, and a mosaic ceiling memorial honoring the dead of our air forces. A new, 4,000-square-foot center visitor center opened in May 2014. Through interpretive exhibits that incorporate personal stories, photographs, films, and interactive displays, visitors will gain a better understanding of this critical campaign that contributed to the Allied victory in Europe during World War II.

I’ve always been interested in military history, and having logged over 6600 flight hours as a C-130 Navigator, the aerial bombardment of Europe during World War II fascinated me. Did you know that over 79,000 U.S. Airmen were killed from 1942-1945 in the European Theater of Operations. Most U.S. Bomber Aircraft (B-17 Flying Fortresses and B-24 Liberator aircraft carried a crew of 9 or 10 airmen. Most of the strategic aircraft that bombed Europe during World War II were based in the United Kingdom, and there are many servicemen buried there that never got to come home.

 I visited the Luxembourg-American Cemetery in 2018, and was shocked to see all the graves of U.S. Airmen who were buried there. I plan on paying my respects to those Airmen during my trip. I have also reached out to some private organizations who maintain museums dedicated to those airmen and the organizations that they flew with. One of those is the 95 Bomb Group Heritage Association in Norfolk https://www.95thbg-horham.com/ . Manned entirely with volunteers, they are only open one Sunday every month for tours of their museum. The volunteers have a great story to tell on how they have renovated on old NCO club at the now closed airfield into place dedicated to the memory of the 95^th Bomb Group. They have agreed to give me a private tour of their museum on October 4th, and I plan on making a generous donation to their museum as a token of my generosity.

As the month of September winds down, I’ll be headed to Oxford, Windsor, and Peterborough before entering into Norfolk to see some of my old stomping grounds (RAF Mildenhall).