'Recently I attended a luncheon meeting of newspaper and magazine publishers in honor of Colonel John Jacob Astor, chairman of the London Times. Colonel Astor had come to ask for help in finding the next of kin of U.S. servicemen killed in Britain, or in operations based on Britain, during World War II. The Times, he explained, wants to give these near relatives a book it has just published, Britain's Homage to 28,000 American Dead.

The book is a warm tribute to U.S. soldiers, sailors and airmen who made Britain their home for a period during the war, as well as a sincere effort to cement good will between the two largest English-speaking nations. That feeling is best typified in one sentence of a message from Winston Churchill, opposite the frontispiece: "To those who did not return the best memorial is the fellowship of our two countries, which by their valour they created and by their sacrifice they have preserved."

The book's first chapter is a candid account of the relationships, frictions and ultimate understanding between the people of Britain and the hundreds of thousands of U.S. servicemen whom they suddenly found in their midst. Later chapters tell of the financing of an American Memorial Chapel in St. Paul's Cathedral (through the small, anonymous contributions of millions of people in the British Isles, who raised approximately $280,000), and of the dedication on July 4, 1951 of the Roll of Honour, listing the names of the 28,000 American dead.

The story of the chapel is told in the book's preface: "In the eastern apse of the war-scarred St. Paul's Cathedral, in the heart of the City of London, stood the Jesus Chapel, which was wrecked in the blitz of 1941. Where the Jesus Chapel once stood, a new shrine is now taking shape . . . The American Memorial Chapel in St. Paul's . . . commemorates the Americans of all services who lost their lives while based upon Britain during the war."

TIME'S European advertising manager, Walter Graebner, had written me earlier about the book. He called the opening chapter "a frank, amusing, and deeply moving story," which "probably tells more about what the British really thought of the American soldiers and what the Americans thought of the British than anything published so far."

The book tells how Britons gradually came to know the U.S. serviceman, and to discover the "likeness between G.I. Joe and Tommy Atkins . . . Like his British colleague, the American soldier was an amateur, and reared to mistrust the posturings of professional militarists ... A civilian at heart, he drove his tank as if it were a long-distance truck on U.S. Route 1, set out from British ports on Arctic convoys or anti-submarine patrols as if he were taking the family across to Staten Island, and bombed-up a Flying Fortress as though he were loading the mails from Bismarck for Butte, Montana."

When the British press and radio sent out requests for donations to build the chapel, thousands of letters accompanied the gifts, many telling of the writers' recollections of men in the U.S. forces.

"In those years," the book says, "death became all men's familiar, but to the British the losses among American forces stationed in their own island seemed especially poignant, for these men and women were their peculiar charge . . . The comradeship of war may fade . . . and bickering, jealousy and suspicion may again become the common currency of international relations. But individuals have longer memories than nations."

The Times tried to get the names of next of kin, but learned that no such list exists, since the Defense Department has no breakdown of war dead by battle areas. Those eligible to receive the book have been asked to send a card to Colonel J. J. Astor, the London Times, 45 E. 51st St., New York 22, N.Y., and to give their name, address, relationship to the serviceman, his name and his military unit. If you are among those who receive a copy of Britain's Homage, I know it will move you as much as it did me.

Cordially yours,

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