Plaque to commemorate Seaton’s wartime support for US troops will be unveiled on June 6, 2014,

A plaque commemorating Seaton’s wartime help for US troops will be unveiled on the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings.

The Americans have chosen June 6, 2014, to present the memorial, expressing their gratitude for the town’s morale-boosting support, ahead of the invasion.

It will recognise Seaton’s role in housing and helping the men of the 2nd Battalion, 8th Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry division, from January to early June 1944.

It is the result of a visit to the town two years ago by former US Army Colonel John Rudman, whose father Robert was stationed in Seaton before taking part in the landings on Utah Beach, where hundreds of his comrades died.

Details of the plaque have been sent to Ted Gosling, curator of the Axe Valley Heritage Museum who says it will be up to the town to decide where it goes.

He said the Windsor Gardens field of remembrance could be a possible location.

The plaque, which bears the US regiment’s insignia, will read; “On behalf of the people of the United States this plaque was placed here on June 6, 2014, to thank the people of Seaton for all they did for our soldiers and to commemorate our father, 1SG Robert G Rudman, his best friend T/SGT Bert Nicholls, of H Company, and all the brave Americans of the 2nd Battalion, 8th Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Division, who left these shores to be the first allied units on the beaches of Normandy, France, on D-Day, June 6th, 1944 (Utah Beach)…many never to return to us. Patriae Fidelitas (loyalty to country).