It’s 75 years since the Friendly Invasion, when the first US troops arrived in Britain and Winston Churchill coined the phrase ‘special relationship’ to describe how the two nations would stand together in the Second World War.
Some 3.5 million Americans passed through the UK from 1942 to early 1946 and many never made it home.
Faces of Cambridge takes place on 27 and 28 May as part of Memorial Day weekend at the Cambridge American Cemetery, Madingley Road, near Coton. Over 3000 of the headstones and names carved on the Wall of the Missing will then have a photograph of the individual that’s commemorated there. Like ghosts from the past, their faces appear. Meet the brave, forever young Americans of the war, with the cemetery also dressed in flags.
Cambridge was one of three sites in the country used to temporarily bury US servicemen and women, on land donated by Cambridge University. Many of their families chose, at the end of the war, to have their remains stay in the UK and in 1956 the Cambridge American Cemetery and Memorial officially opened. Entry is free and group tours are available at abmc.gov.
