505th Parachute Infantry Plaque - Quorn
Details:
At the base of the town war memorial.
An inscribed flat gray stone memorial in a small flower garden.
The memorial members the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 82nd Airborne Division which was stationed here during WW2.
From the Quorn Village Museum website:
The 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the US 82nd Airborne Division arrived in Quorn on February 14th, 1944. Their camp was on the Farnham estate, now owned by Tarmac. The entrance was where the current opening for Northage Close (off Wood Lane) is now. The sergeant's mess was at what is now 27 Meeting Street.
The paratroopers departed two and a half months later on Monday May 29th 1944 to prepare for D-Day (operation Overlord, specifically at St Mere Eglise) and after a month fighting in Normandy they returned to Quorn victorious. But the cost was high. Two-hundred and twenty men were killed in action out of a total of two-thousand.
They left Quorn again on Friday, September 15th 1944 to parachute into Holland (operation Market Garden, mainly centred around Nijmegen, Holland), never to return to Quorn as soldiers.
The village took the American paratroopers to their hearts. There is a plaque in the Memorial Gardens, upon which a wreath is placed each year on remembrance Sunday. There is also an avenue of lime trees in Stafford Orchard (the village park) in remembrance of those American soldiers that died.
Source: http://www.quornmuseum.com/
Monument Text:
THIS PLAQUE IS DEDICATED TO THE MEN OF
THE UNITED STATES
505TH PARACHUTE INFANTRY REGIMENT
WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES DURING THE
D-DAY NORMANDY LANDINGS AND
LATER IN HOLLAND AND BELGIUM
AFTER THE PASSING OF TIME
THEIR MEMORY IS STILL CHERISHED
JUNE 1994
