Anglo/American Relations in East Anglia, 1942-1945

Dr. Vernon L. Williams
Faculty Renewal Leave
November 9, 2004

Last fall, Dr. Vernon Williams began his faculty renewal leave on the Anglo/American Relations in East Anglia during World War II.  The presentation focused on the United States established Deopham-Green Air Base, built to support daylight bombing against the Axis powers in Europe. Throughout the region, small communities made way for the construction of large-scale airdromes. Farm land turned into a landscape of concrete, Nissan huts, and the implements of war as American bomber and fighter groups built significant infrastructure for operations against Nazi-held targets deep inside Europe. The sudden appearance of the Eighth Air Force in rural England, the rapid growth of the number of bases over a short time frame, and the resulting daily struggle for life and death over the skies of England and the continent forged a unique sense of community in these British villages and towns. Clearly the war shaped a special relationship between the embattled British people and their distant American cousins from “over the pond.”
In 2003 and 2004 Dr. Vernon Williams traveled across the United States and throughout England interviewing American air and ground crews and British family members who lived in the villages around the bases in East Anglia during World War II. The relationship between these two peoples has proved timeless, an Anglo-American community that is as strong and vibrant as ever, surviving through the decades since the war.
Dr. Williams’ presentation included dramatic video clips of interviews from a few of the “Greatest Generation” filmed in England and the United States.  Through his travels, interviews and experiences, Dr. Williams will begin to write his book over the social history forged in East Anglia during WWII after one last trip this late spring to Europe.