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This site was primarily intended to establish the names of those individuals who had, until now, remained unrecognised. Despite this, it would be inappropriate not to include the names of the 72 brave young Americans of the 356th Fighter Group of the United States Eighth Army Air Force who made the ultimate sacrifice whilst serving at Martlesham Heath between the 5th of October 1943 and the 2nd of November 1945. Several of the entries state that the serviceman was buried in a particular location “originally”. This information was taken from the 356th Fighter Group Book of Remembrance written in 1946. It was often the case that they were reinterned elsewhere in the immediate post war years and this is considered a possibility.
They were motivated and honourable young men prepared to leave their families and all they held dear behind them to travel many thousands of miles in order to face an exceptionally dangerous enemy. They lost many friends and comrades which only served to remind them daily, in the strongest possible terms, that many of them would never return home.
It is due to the exceptionally high price paid by men like these, and of course their loved ones, and the untold sacrifices and exceptional physical and emotional hardships they endured that we are able to enjoy the freedom we do today.
I would respectfully invite visitors to this page to please take some time reading each name and at the end spend a minute or two quietly contemplating the gravity of their individual sacrifices.
Thank you.
"When You Go Home, Tell Them Of Us And Say, For Their Tomorrow, We Gave Our Today"
John Maxwell Edmonds (1875 -1958)
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