Carefully sited in the village churchyard, the simple plaque is a record of a now distant spring day when the violence of war fell from the sky. It lists ten Americans killed on 22 April 1944 when their aircraft – a B-24 Liberator – was shot down by pursuing German aircraft. They were returning from a mission and were just 20 miles from the safety of their base at Seething in Norfolk. The plaque was dedicated in April 2010.
When I learnt of its unveiling, I just knew I had to attend. I was writing a book about how the wartime American presence in Britain had been commemorated, and this plaque brought it all so close to home.
The village in question – Kessingland, in north Suffolk – was my childhood home, the place where my fascination with the Second World War had begun. I spent many a weekend cycling to the wartime airfields located nearby, the fading outlines of which still dot the Ordnance Survey map sheets. These are evocative places of ruined runways and decaying buildings, locations haunted by history.
War Classics – With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa