ONCE Burtonwood was home to the largest US military installation outside of America. The largest warehouse in Europe. Generations of GI brides.

One sprawling Stateside enclave which boasted its own bowling alley, ice cream factory and rock and roll sounds from across the pond.

Thirty thousand or more planes would take off and land in the average year from this sleepy corner of old South Lancashire – not least the Berlin-bound Skymasters involved in breaking the blockade of the besieged German city in 1948-49.

Which is why Guardian reader Allan Mason’s call for a permanent memorial to the former airbase should go stratospheric.

Today’s giant steel temples to the logistics trades, festooning either side of the M62 and swelling our non-domestic rates coffers rather nicely, share little of the glamour of the hangars and control towers for which Burtonwood was renowned.

No-one should obstruct the pace of progress but as Omega transforms this corridor, Allan’s timely concept should gain traction.

Even the old man wistfully recalls the days when he could cycle across the fields from Dallam to Gate No. 4, giving access to Earhart Hall on regular open days.

And what a different world the camp, home to B-17 Flying Fortresses, B-24 Liberators and B-26 Marauders, must have presented.

The airbase began life as an RAF establishment, well-placed geographically and industrially to battle the scourge of the Luftwaffe, from 1940 onwards.

Not until the summer of 1942 was the first Yankee accent heard in those parts but numbers would swell to 18,500 by the end of the decade.

Serviced by more than 1,600 buildings and boasting three-and-a-half million square feet of storage, 18 miles of roads and four-and-a-half miles of railway track, it made more than a dent on the local landscape.

For many years the stalwarts of the Burtonwood Association have diligently kept the flag flying for the old airbase, as it gradually receded from view, and it would be opportune now to give this idea a fair hearing.

Parish councillors have commendably expressed an interest and fingers crossed that a community development grant will be forthcoming from Omega Developments.

Perhaps this theme could be extended, with replicas constructed of the old Russian guns, seized at the siege of Sebastopol in the 1850s, which once stood as a Crimean War memorial near the old Arpley station and are now lost to history.

And a plaque to commemorate the efforts of munitions staff at the former Royal Ordnance plant at Risley would not go amiss.

Like my nan used to remind us, if it wasn’t for making bombs to drop on the Germans, she would never have met my granddad and there might just be a blank space right here.

  •  A quick glance at last week’s front page had Podium’s pulse racing. Warrington’s most wanted were being rounded up.

The net was tightening on Lymm’s Christopher Guest More then, still wanted more than a decade on for the horrific torture murder of Brian Waters in Nantwich?

Not quite. A shoplifter, a breach of licence. I know who I’d rather see locked up for the greater good.

  •  Quite heartening to note, amid the continuing heartache over railways in Warrington, that one small corner of the network might be heading for happier times.

Plans have been unveiled by new operators Arriva for new ‘next train’ signs, CCTV and help points at the tiny Glazebrook station.

Hardly the most dynamic of public transport interchanges, you might have expected Glazebrook to be shunted off long ago but it’s full steam ahead.