508th Parachute Infantry Regiment (2000+paratroopers) of the US 82nd Airborne Division set up camp on Nottingham's Wollaton Park on March 10th 1944. The contingent had been transported around midnight from the city's Victoria Station with a police escort. The Americans soon became familiar figures in Wollaton and the wider Nottingham area, regularly enjoying pub culture at venues such as The Hand and Heart on Derby Road and Pelham Street's Cafe de Paris. Close ties were formed with local communities.

Decades later, Joan Wallace, aged 10 in 1944, recalled a warm evening that July (a few weeks after 'D'Day) with 'little groups of women standing huddled together on Independent Street (Radford, Nottingham). I'll never forget how sad they looked. Crying, they let the tears flow unchecked. When I asked my mother what was wrong, she replied "It's the Yanks... off Wollaton Park. Loads of them won't be coming back. They've been killed."' (Bygones, Nottingham Evening Post 4/6/2010)

508th PIR were dropped into Normandy on 'D' Day (6/6/44), deployed near Arnhem in September and later fought during the Battle of the Bulge, Hitler's, ultimately unsuccessful, final throw of the European World War Two dice. 616 of the Americans who camped on Wollaton Park were killed, 254 posted missing and 1,274 wounded.

The four stories below, covering each 1944-45 theatre of war involving 508th PIR men, are included as enduring tributes to all the young American soldiers who camped on Wollaton Park during World War Two, the many who gave their lives and those who survived.

See their Roll of Honour http://www.508pir.org/taps/index.htm for a complete list of 508 PIR's fatalities from the 1944-45 campaigns in France, Holland and Belgium.

With thanks to Chandra Galbraith, Executive Secretary, 82nd Airborne Division Association Inc., Fayetteville, North Carolina for help in researching this section.