International Glenn Miller Festival, Twinwoods, UK.

[Adrian Stevenson]

Hi Guys, here are a few pics from a new event that our British Living History Group , "Summer of '44" attended at the weekend.
This was a new show and was held at the former RAF Twinwoods Airfield near Bedford, where Major Glenn Miller took off from in Dec. 1944 and was never heard of again.
The buildings are slowly being restored to their WW2 condition. The control tower is very well done. All this is being done by the owner who wants this venue to take off for WW2 based events.
There was a fair turnout of living history groups, mostly US orientated, with two German units and ours the sole British Army group.
There were 1940's Swing bands playing all day for both Sat & Sun.
A very enjoyable event.
Cheers, Ade.

[Adrian Stevenson]

Another view of the control tower.

[Adrian Stevenson]

RAF uniformed personel from the "On OPs 39-45 Group" gave guided tours around the tower.

[Adrian Stevenson]

Two of the lads from my group. We had an original hut to sleep in, which was in "relic" condtion, but very atmospheric; alone one side we ran (a very sucessful and popular with the public) "Camoflauge and Concealment Course" and on the other side a RAMC Medical display.

[Adrian Stevenson]

Myself on our RAMC display demonstrating a "Thomas splint" (not just having a lie down for half an hour )

[Adrian Stevenson]

A few of us with the lads from 509th US PIR.

[Adrian Stevenson]

Hi Guys, here is a link for my friend Denis' militaria website which shows some more photos from this event last weekend.

http://www.merlins.flyer.co.uk/news.htm

Cheers, Ade.

[Jan B]

Very cool pictures, Ade! It looks like they did a great job in restoring that control tower. I also clicked on the link for the extra photos...
Do you have any additional pictures of the german units?

cheers

Jan

[Adrian Stevenson]

Hi Jan, sorry, I do not have any pics of the two German groups that attended. I cannot recall the name of the first group, but they did Heer and had a nice little camp diarama with Zeltbahn tents and a captured Soviet copy of the PaK36 A/T gun.
The second group call themselves "Axis42" and are a new group with members from the North East of the UK. They displayed as the "Hermann Goring" Regt. They did not do a big display mainly a layout of weapons but they did a small firefight twice each day against the Yanks of 504th PIR.

We enjoyed the event and will certainly do it again next year. The venue is also going to be used for the revived special forces "Chutes & Daggers" show which in previous years has been held at Bletchley Park. Again this is one we will support (our group got 1st prize at this show last year).
Our group is starting negotiations to have one of the original huts on the site to restore and use as our base and to house some of our larger vehicles.
Cheers, Ade.
PS. The attatched pic is from early Sat. night before everyone arrived and is in one of the huts where we had a party for Lez's 40th Birthday this went on until 4am...