Memories & remembrance.

I was tasked today with taking girl to Snetterton Market, an appallingly grim place. However, Snetterton's been a part of my life since I was about five, when visits to the racetrack were also spent with me investigating remnants of it's wartime, bomber base past - B17s were based there, and the dispersals were in use as car parking spots.

Leaving the market by the back-roads, we noticed some nearby woodland had been trimmed back, revealing some more of the old buildings. Girl was interested, so after our visit to nearby relatives, she wanted more of a history fix. Cue a trip to Deopham Green, another former US bomber base.

Now, there are remnants of the runways, a long road tracks along one of them, and one of the dispersals has this simple memorial aside it. The top has the runway layout and a B17 carved in the stone. There are a few wartime buildings nearby, in farm use, but the place has a sense of big and empty that for me epitomises these hidden giants. For anyone interested in this obscure subject (unlikely I know) Roderick McKenzie's "Ghost fields of Norfolk" is a good introduction.