Glenn Miller Festival Twinwood Farm Bedford England August 2004 Part 2

The next day Chris was to take us on a visit to some of the wartime American bases that Glenn Miller played at with his orchestra back in 1944. The first base was the USAAF Station 365 Halesworth in Suffolk. Halesworth airfield was the home of the 56th Fighter Group, (Zemke's Wolfpack) and also the Liberators of the 489th Bomb Group. Today it has a fine museum which amongst other artifacts, contains memorabilia to the visit by the AEF Band who were flown in from Boxted on the 6th August 1944. One of the huge runways still remains along with a few old airfield buildings. A huge hanger still exists which may well be a new building and which is now used by a meat processing plant.

What this station must have been like in the war years we can only be imagined by those of us who were not old enough to serve in those days. Standing on the runway with Chris and my wife Liz, a thought crossed my mind who could say for sure that the B24s bringing Glenn and the AEF band to Halesworth did not touch down at the very spot on which we stood? A large warehouse on the site where hangers once were   The original runway still intact

Our next stop was to Hardwick Airfield, the wartime base for the 93rd bomber group and now a farm owned by Mr David Woodrow. Approaching the base we could see a few buildings, and whilst we were heading in the right direction through a winding road we had to eventually ask a man working in a wood yard the direction onto the old perimeter track. We found it after some interesting and complicated directions and drove along the now deteriorating concrete track, eventually ending up at a single storey building which apparently was the officers mess, now a pig sty. (No comment please from you enlisted men.) On the road leading to this pig sty (officers mess) we were amazed to see the remains of aircraft engines and airframes from the war time B24's still littering the old airfield some 60 years after the Americans had left.

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The Music Supplied on this page by kind permission of Peter Roxburgh Pete now living in Australia arranges for the Australian Glenn Miller Tribute Band

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