Cambridge American Cemetery and Memorial is a

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

American military

war grave A war grave is a burial place for members of the armed forces or civilians who died during military campaigns or operations. Definition The term "war grave" does not only apply to graves: ships sunk during wartime are often considered to b ...

cemetery, located between the villages of Coton and

Madingley Madingley is a small village near Cambridge, England. It is located close to the nearby villages of Coton and Dry Drayton on the western outskirts of Cambridge. The population of the civil parish at the 2011 Census was 210. The village was kno ...

, north-west of

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

, England. The cemetery, dedicated in 1956, contains 3,811 American war dead and covers . Cambridge American Cemetery is one of 26 overseas military cemeteries administered by the

American Battle Monuments Commission The American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC) is an independent agency of the United States government that administers, operates, and maintains permanent U.S. military cemeteries, memorials and monuments primarily outside the United States. ...

(ABMC). The memorial is listed Grade II* on the

National Heritage List for England The National Heritage List for England (NHLE) is England's official database of protected heritage assets. It includes details of all English listed buildings, scheduled monuments, register of historic parks and gardens, protected shipwrecks, an ...

The cemetery

The

University of Cambridge , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

donated 30.5 acres of land on the north slope of Madingley Hill to the American military forces for use as a temporary cemetery during

in 1943. Following the war, the American Battle Monuments Commission selected Cambridge as the site for America's permanent World War II cemetery and war memorial in the United Kingdom. America's war dead from three temporary cemeteries in the British Isles were consolidated into the Cambridge cemetery during an extensive cemetery construction project, and simultaneously the US Government repatriated approximately 58% of the existing war dead at the request of the surviving family members. Cambridge American Cemetery and Memorial was dedicated on 16 July 1956. The cemetery contains 3,809 headstones, with the remains of 3,812 servicemen, including airmen who died over Europe and sailors from North Atlantic convoys. The inscribed Wall of the Missing includes four representative statues of servicemen, sculpted by American artist

Wheeler Williams Wheeler Williams (November 30, 1897 – August 12, 1972) was an American sculptor, born in Chicago, Illinois. Life and career Williams studied sculpture at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He attended Yale, where he graduated ...

. The wall records the names of 5,127 missing servicemen, most of whom died in the

Battle of the Atlantic The Battle of the Atlantic, the longest continuous military campaign in World War II, ran from 1939 to the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, covering a major part of the naval history of World War II. At its core was the Allied naval blockade ...

or in the strategic air bombardment of northwest Europe. Cambridge American Cemetery 2012-11-25 07

Besides personnel of the United States armed forces there are also buried 18 members of the

British Commonwealth The Commonwealth of Nations, simply referred to as the Commonwealth, is a political association of 56 member states, the vast majority of which are former territories of the British Empire. The chief institutions of the organisation are the Co ...

armed services, who were American citizens serving chiefly in the

Royal Air Force The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the United Kingdom's air and space force. It was formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, becoming the first independent air force in the world, by regrouping the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and ...

and

Air Transport Auxiliary The Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) was a British civilian organisation set up at the start of the Second World War with headquarters at White Waltham Airfield in Berkshire. The ATA ferried new, repaired and damaged military aircraft between factori ...

, besides an officer of the

Royal Canadian Air Force The Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF; french: Aviation royale canadienne, ARC) is the air and space force of Canada. Its role is to "provide the Canadian Forces with relevant, responsive and effective airpower". The RCAF is one of three environm ...

and another of the British

Royal Armoured Corps The Royal Armoured Corps is the component of the British Army, that together with the Household Cavalry provides its armour capability, with vehicles such as the Challenger 2 Tank and the Scimitar Reconnaissance Vehicle. It includes most of the A ...

, whose graves are registered and maintained by the

Commonwealth War Graves Commission The Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) is an intergovernmental organisation of six independent member states whose principal function is to mark, record and maintain the graves and places of commemoration of Commonwealth of Nations mil ...

.
CWGC Cemetery Report. In May 2014, a new visitor centre opened, containing exhibits about some of those individuals interred or remembered at the cemetery, and the wider World War II campaigns in which they were involved.

Notable burials and memorials

John Martin Howard John Martin Howard (20 August 1917 – 11 June 1942) was a United States Navy officer from Pennsylvania who served during World War II as a Naval mine disposalman. He died along with Lcdr. Roy Berryman Edwards in a naval mine explosion while obse ...

(1917–1942), US Navy officer – (memorial – buried at sea) * John Joseph Seerley Jr. (1897–1943), pilot in both World War One and World War Two * Vincent F. Harrington (1903–1943), US Representative and US Army Air Forces officer *

Glenn Miller Alton Glen Miller (March 1, 1904 – December 15, 1944) was an American big band founder, owner, conductor, composer, arranger, trombone player and recording artist before and during World War II, when he was an officer in the United States Arm ...

(1904–1944), jazz bandleader and trombonist (memorial – lost at sea) *

Damon Jesse Gause Damon Jesse Gause (June 17, 1915 – March 9, 1944) was an American military officer who served in the United States Army Air Corps. He was captured and escaped from Bataan, then Corregidor. He served with the Ninth Air Force and flew with the H ...

(1915–1944), fighter pilot *

Joseph P. Kennedy Jr. Joseph Patrick Kennedy Jr. (July 25, 1915 – August 12, 1944) was the eldest of the nine children born to Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. A US Navy lieutenant, he was killed in action during World War II while serving as a l ...

(1915–1944), eldest son of

Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. Joseph Patrick Kennedy (September 6, 1888 – November 18, 1969) was an American businessman, investor, and politician. He is known for his own political prominence as well as that of his children and was the patriarch of the Irish-American Ke ...

and

Rose Fitzgerald Rose Elizabeth Fitzgerald Kennedy (July 22, 1890 – January 22, 1995) was an American philanthropist, socialite, and matriarch of the Kennedy family. She was deeply embedded in the "Lace curtain and shanty Irish, lace curtain" Irish Catholic, ...

(memorial – lost at sea) *

Leon Vance Leon Robert Vance Jr. (August 11, 1916 – July 26, 1944) was a Medal of Honor recipient who served in the United States Army Air Forces during World War II. Early life and family Leon Robert Vance Jr. was born and raised in Enid, Oklahoma. Van ...

(1916–1944), US Army Air Forces pilot and

Medal of Honor The Medal of Honor (MOH) is the United States Armed Forces' highest military decoration and is awarded to recognize American soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen, guardians and coast guardsmen who have distinguished themselves by acts of valor. ...

recipient (memorial – lost at sea) * Three of the crew of

USAAF The United States Army Air Forces (USAAF or AAF) was the major land-based aerial warfare service component of the United States Army and ''de facto'' aerial warfare service branch of the United States during and immediately after World War II ...

B-17 Flying Fortress The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress is a four-engined heavy bomber developed in the 1930s for the United States Army Air Corps (USAAC). Relatively fast and high-flying for a bomber of its era, the B-17 was used primarily in the European Theater ...

'' Mi Amigo'', which crashed in Sheffield, killing all 10 crew (seven later repatriated to the US)

The memorial (including chapel)

The memorial building is long, wide and high; it is made of

Portland stone Portland stone is a limestone from the Tithonian stage of the Jurassic period quarried on the Isle of Portland, Dorset. The quarries are cut in beds of white-grey limestone separated by chert beds. It has been used extensively as a building sto ...

; the doors of teak are embellished with relief models of World War II military equipment. The memorial is separated into a large museum room with a small chapel at the far end from the doors. A great map on the wall shows schematically the air sorties flown from

East Anglia East Anglia is an area in the East of England, often defined as including the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire. The name derives from the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of the East Angles, a people whose name originated in Anglia, in ...

, together with convoys across the North Atlantic and other actions in the war. The wall and roof has a mosaic of angels and ghostly aircraft. The south wall is inset with

stained glass Stained glass is coloured glass as a material or works created from it. Throughout its thousand-year history, the term has been applied almost exclusively to the windows of churches and other significant religious buildings. Although tradition ...

windows displaying the

seals Seals may refer to: * Pinniped, a diverse group of semi-aquatic marine mammals, many of which are commonly called seals, particularly: ** Earless seal, or "true seal" ** Fur seal * Seal (emblem), a device to impress an emblem, used as a means of a ...

of the States of the Union arranged in ceremonial order. The chapel was designed and built between 1952 and 1954 by the Boston based architects Perry, Shaw, Hepburn, Kehoe and Dean. Hughes and Bicknell of Cambridge were the executant architects.

Design

The architects of the site plan were Perry, Shaw, Hepburn and Dean, while the landscape architecture was arranged by the

Olmsted Brothers The Olmsted Brothers company was a landscape architectural firm in the United States, established in 1898 by brothers John Charles Olmsted (1852–1920) and Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. (1870–1957), sons of the landscape architect Frederick Law ...

company.

Chapel gallery

File:Madingley_American_Cemetery_chapel.jpg, Chapel interior File:Cambridge American Cemetery and Memorial - the Great Map.JPG, Showing the air sorties from East Anglia File:Cambridge American Cemetery 2012-11-25 04.jpg, Design on the ceiling of the chapel File:Cambridge American Cemetery 2012-11-25 01.jpg, Altar in the chapel

References

External links

* *
UK Airfields : Cambridge American Memorial, Madingley
{{Authority control 1943 establishments in England 1956 establishments in England American Battle Monuments Commission Cemeteries in Cambridgeshire Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemeteries in England Grade II* listed buildings in Cambridgeshire Monuments and memorials in Cambridgeshire South Cambridgeshire District United Kingdom–United States military relations World War II cemeteries in the United Kingdom World War II memorials in England