Over the last number of seasons, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales' Afternoons at Hoddinott Hall series have explored various themes, characters, or specific periods in musical history (and the musical present). 6z2y2r

My favourite so far has been last season's exploration of music commissioned by, and dedicated to the impresario Paul Sacher - I genuinely felt I learnt something over the course of the series. Moreover, I was both astounded and inspired by the contribution this one man had made to our rich heritage of Western classical music.

Sacher was responsible for promoting and encouraging composers we now eulogise as giants of music, such as Stravinsky, Strauss, Henze, Lutoslawski, Dutilleux, Bartok, Britten, Elliot Carter and Hindemith, to name but a very few. An eclectic group of names, I'm sure you'll agree, but without Sacher's patronage many of our most beloved works may never have been written.

This season, between September to December, we will be embarking upon a new study entitled Americana. This will complement Radio 3's Afternoon on Three exploration of music from the States, and indeed each concert of our four concert series can be heard live on Radio 3.

Exciting for us here at BBC NOW HQ is the news that we will also be broadcast across the USA on American Public Media. So, Aunt Rose, if you're reading this - you can listen in too!

We're even going to have audio link ups with Fred Child from his studio in Minnesota (presenter of APM's Performance Today), while in Hoddinott Hall we will be ed by Radio 3's Late Junction presenter, Fiona Talkington. All in all, this will be a very cool transatlantic experience for orchestra, radio, and studio audience alike!

In the early 20th century, there emerged a desire amongst composers from, or based in America, to no longer simply emulate the voice of the Old World, but rather, to search for and discover a musical language that epitomised and encapsulated the New World. Their desire to assert their identity as American composers meant that there was a necessity to push musical boundaries, and to break the mould their musical forefathers had brought to America with them.

Consequently, what has emerged over the last century and a bit is an exciting, and diverse musical scene, a compositional environment that is truly a living, breathing being, informed by, but not fettered to our centuries long European heritage (glorious though it may be).

America itself is a bubbling, steaming, melting pot of cultures, ethnicities and tongues, and this is reflected in the influences that can be identified in American composition.

In Americana there will be names that you recognise (Adams, Copland, Barber), names synonymous with the music of the States. However, this series will also introduce the audience (and me!) to many composers and works that are little known here in Britain. I am relishing the opportunity to discover them, and I hope you can us for this exciting series.

The orchestra's Americana season will be held at BBC Hoddinott Hall, Cardiff Bay, in four afternoon concerts starting at 2pm.

The concerts will be held on 24 September, 18 October, 19 November and 2 December. For more information, call the Audience Line on 0800 052 1812 or visit bbc.co.uk/now

From this week, the BBC is embarking on a celebration of cinema music - with BBC Radio 6 Music, Radios 1 & 1xtra, Radio 2, Radio 3 and the Asian Network, alongside a complimentary series of TV programmes on BBC Four, all coming together to celebrate the BBC's Sound of Cinema Season.

All next week Radio 3's Live in Concert broadcasts will be dedicated to the incredible orchestral scores of Hollywood. The BBC National Orchestra of Wales will be performing on Wednesday night at St David's Hall, and our evening of Hollywood glamour will be introduced by Mark Kermode, arguably one of the most well-known film critics in Britain today.

The concert will also mark the beginning of our 2013/2014 season at St David's Hall as orchestra-in-residence - talk about opening the season with a bang!

A great movie score should suggest the very essence of a film's intention; if there were no words, the music should leave you in no doubt as to the nature of the onscreen action. Indeed, a great soundtrack can help to immortalise a great film, and for our America at the Movies concert we have a selection of truly remarkable scores.

There are the names you would expect, names so identified with cinema that their exclusion would lead to much wailing and gnashing of teeth (mostly by the brass), such as John Williams, Howard Shore, and one of my favourites, the inimitable Danny Elfman.

However, there may be names that are not so familiar. For me, one such name is Elmer Bernstein, who, it turns out, scored two of my father's favourite films - The Ten Commandments and The Great Escape. We will perform his theme from The Magnificent Seven.

Miklós Rósza (perhaps another ‘who are you?' for some) will also feature. Some regular blog readers may me waxing lyrical about Rósza's music back in March 2012, when we performed his Three Hungarian Sketches at the Brangwyn Hall, Swansea, under the baton of Roberto Minczuk.

For Sound of Cinema, we will perform his music to Hitchcock's 1945 film, Spellbound. It was a stroke of luck for Rósza that he got to collaborate with Hitchcock on this movie, as Hitchcock's regular collaborator, the great Bernard Herrmann, was unavailable.

Indeed, Herrmann's scores are those that I am most looking forward to getting familiar with. His name is synonymous with the films of Hitchcock. If you were one of the many who enjoyed the Hitchcock Season at Chapter Arts Centre last year, you will have heard Herrmann's incredible writing ratcheting the suspense and terror factor of Hitchcock's psychological mind melts up to the nth degree.

Hermann is perhaps best ed for the chilling, shocking, screeching strings of Psycho's iconic shower scene, but for this concert we will perform the equally memorable Suite from the Hitchcock's 1958 tale of obsession, Vertigo. We will also perform excerpts from Herrmann's score for Taxi Driver, Martin Scorcese's 1978 film about an outsider turned vigilante.

Good film music will always evoke the memory of the work it was written to be part of, but great film music can also stand on its own, simply as good music. I believe the scores we will present to you are all incredible in their own right - but they made the films they partnered immortal.

Tweet the orchestra on @BBCNOW, including the hashtag #bbcsoundofcinema and let us know your favourite film scores.

Tickets for America at the Movies, on Wednesday 18 September, can be booked by calling the Orchestra's Audience Line on 0800 052 1812, or visiting the St David's Hall website.

Last October I received a request for help while appearing on BBC Radio Wales. It read: "How would you go about tracing an American GI from World War Two?"

I quickly replied with basic information about ing GI Trace, an organisation set up to help people trace their American GI fathers and/or families. I also suggested that he read Shirley McGlade's book Daddy, Where Are You?: The Moving Story Of A Daughter's Search For Her GI Father.

Later off air I rang and spoke to Cardiff based Bob Williams. He was born in 1945 in Tongwynlais. The details on his birth certificate confirm that his mother was Thelma Abbott and his father was Vito Victor De Lorto, a private in the US Forces. Incredibly even the service number was provided.

After the war Vito returned to the USA and in 1948 Thelma married Jack Williams, who adopted five-year-old Bob in 1950.

Bob's mother Thelma died in 2012. She was one of 11 children and when one of her brother's died two faded photos were found in the house. They were of Vito.

Also in the house was a Purple Heart medal. These were awarded for all combat related injuries while serving in the US Army. The items were given to Bob since it was no secret that his father was an American of Italian descent.

Unlike most British campaign medals Purple Hearts have no service number and there is no searchable list anywhere. More than 964,000 Purple Hearts were issued during World War Two alone so it was not possible to go down this search route. However, since Victor had died in 1980 it was possible to order a copy of his service records but I was told it would take at least three months for them to arrive.

In the meantime I turned to my family history and people tracing skills and very slowly - because of America's different data protection and privacy laws - I was able to build a picture of Vito Victor De Lorto's incredibly complex family.

It turns out Vito also used the name Victor. He was born in 1919 and died in 1980.

His mother Minnie Vingezza Malle was one of 16 children. She married three times and had 10 children of her own. Victor was the second son of Michael DeLorto, an Italian immigrant who died in 1924.

Victor married Eleanore Pasowicz in 1941 and they had a daughter, Marlene, who was born in 1941, but the marriage failed while he was serving overseas.

Victor was present when Bob's birth was ed on 20 October 1945. His service records would later show that he went AWOL from 21 October to 30 November 1945, presumably to spend time with Thelma and baby Bob while he made an agonising decision.

The marriage records for Illinois, which are available online, show that Victor married Sally Wood in 1950. Sally already had a daughter called Bonnie who was born in 1945, the same year as Bob.

Victor adopted Bonnie when she was five years old, which seems like the act of a man trying to create a balance in his life and provide a "correction" for the loss of his son.

Bonnie adored Victor as he was the only father she ever knew but she had never seen any photos of him in uniform. She knew very little about what he did during the war and was not aware of any medals in existence or any of his military history.

All this has changed now. If they want to Bob, Bonnie and Victor's four grandsons can his details on the National Purple Heart Hall of Honor with pride.

Although Bob and Bonnie share no actual blood they do share a common father, a man it seems who desperately tried to do the right thing. Now they have one another and can share valuable information about their father.

General Dwight D Eisenhower was not, generally, regarded as a great soldier. But he was the supreme diplomat, the ideal person to pull together - and keep together - such egotistical and dynamic personalities as generals Montgomery, Bradley and Patton. Such unity was essential if the Allies were to gain a foothold in Europe and, eventually, win World War Two.

The people of Wales had read all about Eisenhower in their newspapers and heard about him on the wireless. But on 1 April 1944 they got the opportunity to see him in person as that was the day he came to Pembrokeshire.

Vernon Scott, in his book An Experience Shared, sums up the situation quite irably:

"Had residents been told on the first day of the fourth month of 1944 that the Supreme Allied Commander, General Dwight D Eisenhower, was in Pembroke Dock, they would have surely dismissed it as an April Fool leg pull. But America's top soldier in the European Theatre of Operations, really was in the area."

Eisenhower was in west Wales to inspect the men of the 110th Infantry Regiment. The regiment was part of the 28th Division, the oldest infantry division in the US Army, and in the spring of 1944 was stationed in Pembrokeshire, undergoing final training and preparations for the invasion of Europe.

Eisenhower's visit was both sudden and secret. Even the GIs had no idea he was coming. They were expecting a VIP and had, as a consequence, "bulled up" in the best traditions of the American Army. But nobody knew that the visitor was to be Ike, as the general was universally known.

Eisenhower travelled to Tenby by train where he was met by policemen from the Pembrokeshire force and by a group of US Army "brass." After brief introductions he took his place in a typical American Army convoy. Ike's convoy out of Tenby was headed by a police car and was made up of several US Army vehicles - including the ubiquitous jeeps. Motor cycle out riders, sirens screaming, swept along the column, ensuring that the locals did not interfere with the progress of the general.

Eisenhower's driver that day was an English girl, Kay Summersby Morgan. She had been seconded to the US Army and drove a staff car that had miniature stars and stripes attached to each mudguard.

The general's first port of call was Llanion Barracks on the northern fringe of Pembroke Dock. The day was cold and rather damp, rain squalls drifting in off the Haven, and the soldiers had been lined up for some time before Ike finally appeared. Tempers were beginning to rise but the sudden appearance of the Supreme Commander lifted everyone's spirits.

Eisenhower inspected the soldiers, then climbed into the back of a jeep and, through a megaphone, asked everyone to gather round. He spoke to as many men as he could, asking if they were ready for the task that lay ahead. Ike's easy manner worked wonders on the disgruntled GIs, most of whom responded warmly to the man and his words. Most but not all.

In his book Vernon Scott quotes Dick Grulich, a GI who was present at the parade:

"He severely reprimanded this soldier, who was standing next to me, because of his refusal to say he was proud of the 110th Regiment. He really dressed him down."

After the inspection it was back into his car and Kay Summersby Morgan took him, and his convoy, around the other elements of the 110th Regiment who were scattered widely around the county of Pembrokeshire.

Among other places he visited was Crescelly House where the regiment's Cannon Company were stationed. To the Welsh men and women who ran the house, Eisenhower's appearance came as a complete surprise. The GIs were quickly assembled on the lawn of the house and Ike inspected the men as the servants and staff watched from the windows.

When he had spoken to the troops at Llanion Barracks, Eisenhower had promised that he would have a drink with of the 110th when they crossed the Rhine. He kept his word, sending them truck loads of champagne and other wine the day they breached the mighty river.

Sadly, many of the young men he talked with that day in Pembroke Dock and in the other parts of the county that he visited were not able to enjoy his hospitality as the regiment had suffered badly in the advance through and Belgium.

Dwight D Eisenhower impressed all of the men and women he met in west Wales as a warm and affable man. Warm and affable but also determined. Small wonder that in the years after World War Two he turned to politics and became the president of the USA.

Way back in 2002 when I started working on BBC Radio Wales' 'Look Up Your Genes' family history series we used to tour the country with our roadshow. One of our first venues was in Caernarvon and thus one of the first full family history stories that I had the pleasure of researching was that of local man Harold Lowe.

Known as Commander Harold G Lowe R.N.R at the time of his death in 1944, he was probably better known as 5th Mate H.G. Lowe, survivor of the Titanic but to others he was simply "the one who went back".

Archives often contain unusual and poignant documents, but they are not the only source of information and this employment card along with a photograph of Harold Lowe was located on a CD titled " Titanic - The True Story". Vital to my search was the fact that it also confirms his date of birth.

The third of seven children Harold Godfrey Lowe was born on November 21st 1882 at his home Bryn Lupus, Llanrhos in Conway. Since this meant he was missing from the 1881 census it was necessary to purchase his birth certificate to confirm his parents' names; George Edward Lowe and Emma Harriett Quick who married in 1877 in her home town of Liverpool.

Harold's decision to go to sea was perhaps due to his geographical location rather that one based on family tradition, since his father was a jeweller and goldsmith, as were as his grandfather George Lowe and his great -grandfather Edward Lowe who originated from Chester.

By the time of the 1891 census an 8-year-old Harold and his family had moved to the Castle Hotel in Llanddanwg, Merionethshire, where his father's occupation is listed as Landscape & Cattle Painter, whilst his mother is the hotel manageress.

Just 12 months before that fateful night in April 1912 Harold can be found on the 1911 census listed as a boarder at 7 College View, Bootle at the age of 27, where his occupation is given as a Master Mariner.

Working for the BBC means that I sometimes gain access to the most unusual places, and of all the documents I've viewed the time I spent with the original Titanic documents was the most treasured. Behind the scenes at the National Archives at Kew, in a small room with two nominated of staff to act as security we were very privileged to be able to turn the pages created by the White Star staff in the chaotic aftermath of the disaster...and don't worry of course I was wearing white cotton gloves to protect the pages for perpetuity.

I the vast lists of the names of the missing and the survivors scribbled in pencil, with many mistakes crossed through and roughly erased. This simple list projected a real sense of the urgent need to know who was alive and who had died.

By a cruel twist of coincidence whilst Harold famously survived the sinking of the Titanic two of his brothers tragically drowned in separate incidents. According to details published in his obituary in the North Wales Weekly News on 12 May 1944, it seems young Harold also had a lucky escape whilst out punting with his father, when their punt capsized at Barmouth and he had to swim to shore in his boots.

It seems that Harold was linked to various other deeds of bravery during his naval service; one that stands out is of Harold jumping overboard to rescue a Chinaman whilst suffering from a poisoned arm himself. Naturally, this type of detail is much more valued than any amount of facts obtained from a death certificate or will.

Crucially for the family history enthusiast the obituary also provided the names of the chief mourners who included his widow Ellen and details of his two children Florence and Harold, who was abroad serving in India but whose fiancee, Miss Marguerite Davies, attended on his behalf.

The obituary ends with the simple words " his coffin was draped with the Union Jack. On it were Commander Lowe's hat, medals and sword".

Find out more about the Titanic on the BBC History website.

Read 'Titanic: Victims from Wales of 1912 liner tragedy' on BBC Wales News'.

This weekend sees the 100th anniversary of one of the most tragic and dramatic of all sea disasters, the loss of the White Star liner RMS Titanic. The story, of course, is well known.

On the night of 14/15 April 1912, the Titanic was on her maiden voyage across the Atlantic, ploughing steadily through an area of sea where ice flows had already been reported. Her captain - and the White Star Line - were desperate to claim the Blue Riband for the fastest crossing of the ocean and, partly as a consequence of this recklessness, the ship struck an iceberg and went quickly to the bottom of the ocean.

Over 1,500 lives were lost in the disaster; fewer than a thousand were saved from a ship that many had proclaimed unsinkable and which, in any case, had too few lifeboats to safely accommodate all of the engers and crew. So much for the bald facts of the story.

There are numerous Welsh connections with the disaster. Perhaps the most important - and certainly the best known - comes in the person of the ship's Fifth Officer, Harold Godfrey Lowe. Born in November 1882, he was a native of Eglwys Rhos in Caernarfonshire. At the age of 14, Lowe ran away to sea, g on as a ship's boy and gradually rising through the ranks of his chosen profession.

Lowe earned his First Mate's Certificate in 1908 and ed the White Star Line three years later. Despite his many years at sea, when he was appointed as Fifth Officer on the Titanic in 1912, her maiden voyage was to be his first trip across the Atlantic. Like the ship, Lowe was destined not to make it - at least not on board the Titanic.

When Titanic struck the iceberg Lowe was asleep in his quarters and was not called to duty until half an hour after the collision. After that he was quickly involved in helping women and children into the boats and in keeping order on deck - there are reports that he had to fire his revolver in order to prevent a group on panic stricken men boarding a lifeboat.

As the ship went down Lowe, seeing that there was nothing else to be done, took his allotted place in command of one of her lifeboats. Pulling away from the side of the stricken vessel, there was little alternative but to sit and watch as the last act of the disaster was played out.

By now the ocean was littered with debris and with half-full lifeboats. Harold Lowe gathered in and roped together another two or three boats and made sure they were out of the range of the suction as Titanic sank. He then decided to take his own boat back into the area of the sinking in order to search for survivors. Harold Lowe was the only Titanic officer to undertake this difficult and dangerous task.

He managed to pick up three men from the water, one of whom subsequently died of the cold. After several hours adrift in the Atlantic, Lowe and the men and women in his boat were picked up and rescued by the Carpathia.

The part of Harold Lowe in the 1997 film Titanic was played by young Welsh actor Ioan Gruffud - another, if rather more distant, Welsh connection to the disaster. Hailing from Llwydcoed near Aberdare, Gruffud trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and, with the success of the Titanic film, went on to other notable successes. These have included playing the part of Horatio Hornblower in the TV series of that name.

In Trinity Church in the small seaside town of Penarth there is evidence of a further Welsh connection to the Titanic. A small brass plaque on one of the pews at the front of the church states simply:

In memory of James Reed, aged 18 years, who was drowned in the RMS Titanic disaster, April 15th 1912. Erected by the of his Sunday School class.

Little else is known about young James Reed but, clearly, he was journeying to the New World in search of a better life, leaving his fellow church and the town of Penarth far behind.

Someone else who was planning a new start in the USA was the mother of Edwin Meak. She had left her son behind while she took steerage age in the Titanic and then, hopefully, established herself in America. Tragically, like so many other steerage engers, she was drowned in the disaster. Her son, Edwin, later attended the Nautical Training School in Penarth, the JA Gibbs Home, his fees being paid by the Titanic Relief Fund.

One little known Welsh connection comes in the person of ham radio operator Arthur (Artie) Moore. Born in Pontllanfraith, Artie had lost part of his leg in an accident and had been fitted with a wooden leg. He was an engineer and very keen on the new-fangled wireless technology, so much so that by 1912, when he was just 26-years-old, he had already erected aerials and built an early version of a radio station at his home in Gelligroes Mill near Blackwood.

Artie often listened to messages from ships around the Welsh coast and had even intercepted the Italian government's declaration of war against Libya in 1911. But nothing prepared him for the faint Morse message he received in the early hours of 15 April 1912:-

Require immediate assistance. Come at once. We have struck an iceberg. Sinking. We are putting off the women in the boats.

The message was from the Titanic, 3,000 miles away in the Atlantic, and was the western world's first news of the disaster. The message was followed by several others, the last one reading "Come quickly as possible old man, our engine room is filling up to the boilers." After that there was only silence. The Titanic had gone down.

Artie Moore quickly ed on his news to the local police but, as the press had often reported, the Titanic was unsinkable and so they did not believe him. In any case, 3,000 miles away, there was nothing they or Artie could have done.

The loss of the Titanic was a disaster on an unparalleled scale. The sinking has retained a strange and compelling fascination for people and there is no doubt that the centenary, this April, will be marked by many commemorative events. It is interesting to know that Wales has more than a few connections to the disaster.

BBC News has a whole section dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic.

Say the words "American gangster" and your mind invariably turns to criminals like Al Capone, Pretty Boy Floyd or John Dillinger. But one of the most successful of all gangsters - perhaps because he lived to a ripe old age - was actually a man of Welsh descent.

His real name was Llewellyn Morris Humphreys and for many years, under the assumed name or nickname of Murray the Hump, he was one of the most powerful men in the whole Chicago underworld.

Murray the Hump's parents came from Carno, a few miles outside Newtown, having been married in the Methodist chapel at Llanidloes. However, the final years of the nineteenth century were difficult for the small Welsh farming community and the young couple found it hard to make a living on their isolated hilltop farm.

As a result they decided to emigrate to America in the hope of "making it big" in the New World. Their son, Llewellyn Morris Humphreys, was born in their first American home on North Street, Chicago in the year 1899.

Conditions in Chicago were not much better than Carno and by the age of seven young Llewellyn had quit school and was making a living selling newspapers on the street corners. It was a rough and dangerous existence in a city where the newspaper sellers - and even the staff of the papers - fought with fists and baseball bats for the best pitches.

Luckily, Llewellyn found himself befriended by a local judge, Jack Murray, a man who took something of a benevolent and fatherly interest in the mischievous young boy.

He soon adopted the judge's name, Murray, instead of Llewellyn - which was probably just as well because nobody in Chicago could even begin to pronounce his real name anyway. And, of course, it let the other paper sellers know that he had powerful "protection."

Murray the Hump, as he became known because of his fondness for wearing fashionable camel-hair coats, quickly moved on, out of newspaper selling, into the world of gangsters and hit men. To begin with he worked as a hired gun - one of his early victims was apparently Capone's arch enemy Roger Touhy, blown apart by a shotgun blast shortly after his release from federal prison.

Forging his way up the ladder, Murray the Hump was one of the planners behind the infamous St Valentine's Day Massacre in 1929 when seven of Bugsy Moran's gang were lined up against the wall of a garage in North Street, the very street where the Hump was born, and machine gunned to death. He was far too clever and too powerful to be involved in the killings himself but his was the hand that guided the machine gunners.

After that Murray the Hump was clearly destined for the top. He was the man who, when Prohibition was repealed in 1933, decided to channel the mobsters into the semi-respectable world of running bars, keeping saloons and distributing liquor.

He also became involved in controlling the unions and by the early 1950s the mob was making nearly $100,000 dollars a year under his careful and diligent management. The other interests of the mob, prostitution and gambling, the Hump kept to himself.

When Al Capone died in 1947 Murray the Hump succeeded him at the head of the organisation. The FBI were clear that the Hump was a violent and vicious gangster but one who always preferred to use his brain rather than the machine gun.

He was, they declared, the gangster who introduced money laundering to the mob, investing money from crooked deals in what were otherwise legitimate businesses. He was the man, they said, who was responsible for the introduction of gambling to Las Vegas.

Violence was, however, a way of life for Murray the Hump. It is believed that he murdered the husband of his mistresses, stabbing him with an ice pick before divorcing his own wife, a Native American by the name of Mary, and then marrying the younger mistress.

Murray the Hump never forgot his Welsh roots, so much so that he had a real desire to see what the country was like. He visited Wales just once, in 1963, travelling to the land of his parents under an assumed name. He never had the chance to come again as, two years later, at the age of 66, he died suddenly at his Chicago home.

It was perhaps just as well for the Welsh gangster as the FBI had just issued a warrant for his arrest and with his violent and murderous past beginning to catch up with him he was certainly looking at a long spell behind bars - or maybe even the death penalty.

Feel free to comment! If you want to have your say, on this or any other BBC blog, you will need to sign in to your BBC iD . If you don't have a BBC iD , you can here - it'll allow you to contribute to a range of BBC sites and services using a single .

Need some assistance? Read about BBC iD, or get some help with ing.

During World War Two nearly three million American soldiers and airmen were sent to Britain, most of them arriving in the years 1943 and 1944, prior to the D-Day landings in .

General Dwight Eisenhower arrived in Tenby by train.

Wales housed more than its fair share of these exuberant and sometimes brash young men who were, in the opinion of many, "over paid, over sexed - and over here".

The "over sexed" comment was, perhaps, appropriate as there were over 70,000 GI brides in Britain by the end of the war. Even a small south Wales town like Barry produced no fewer than 56 of them!

There was virtually no part of Wales that did not see American troops and the constant children's cry of "Got any gum chum?" was heard on streets in towns as varied as Aberystwyth, Haverfordwest, Abergavenny, Swansea and Cardiff.

And it was not just chewing gum that the Yanks gave away - the Americans were incredibly generous, wherever they were stationed. As D-Day approached they happily presented the locals with cans of chicken, sides of beef or ham and tins of coffee, giving them out almost to anyone in need. For the people of Wales, who had been suffering from food rationing for several years, they were welcome gifts.

Barry, then an important port, became a huge hub for American servicemen, with over 40 ships eventually leaving the port to take part in the D-Day landings. They built a camp in the part of the town known as Highlight and used to take children from Cadoxton to picture shows, picking them up in their enormous six-wheeled army lorries. Never mind the cinema - for many of the Welsh children this journey was the highlight of the whole affair.

It was not all fun and games in Barry, however, and the ugly spectre of racism did rear its head on a number of occasions. Thompson Street in the town was eventually placed "out of bounds" after an American complained that he had seen a black soldier being served in one of the clubs in the area.

The club owners and the town council, well used to serving men of all races and colours - this was a dock area, after all - refused to ban black soldiers, and the American senior staff took exception and refused their soldiers permission to even walk down the street.

Mostly, however, relations between the Welsh and the Americans were much more cordial. Sometimes entertainment provided for the Americans was a little bizarre. As one Artillery Officer, stationed for a while in Denbigh, later recorded:

"Constant entertainment was provided in a public hall in the town or at a mental hospital on the outskirts."

The idea of holding a dance at a mental hospital seems now to be a strange one, but back in the 1940s these huge edifices were communities in their own right and the staff had, for years, organised their own entertainment. In Abergavenny things were a little more straightforward, as Christine Jones re:

"Abergavenny was full of Yanks, every night. They all wanted to know where the dances were being held. We used to have concerts every Sunday night in the Town Hall and there were dances every Saturday. In the Angel they used to have a place called a Doughnut Dugout."

Those who knew who and what to look for sometimes spotted famous faces. Rudolph Hess was regularly seen around the countryside, being driven out by his two armed guards, but he was a German and therefore nowhere near as interesting as some of the visiting Americans. Christine Jones was working as a telephone engineer:

"I went to Gilwern Hospital one day and was on this ladder against a pole. I was putting in the wire and Jimmy Cagney walked by. James Cagney! I lodged in Abergavenny at the time and the children where I was staying said 'Why didn't you get his autograph?' But he hadn't seen me and just walked by with two soldiers each side. I never thought of it until I got home and the children asked."

Haverfordwest hosted an equally famous American, one Rocco Marchegiano, better known as world heavyweight boxing champion Rocky Marciano. Rocky was stationed in the area and while his boxing career only took off after the war, locals from the town still talk about fistfights between Rocky and his Welsh counterparts.

The nearby town of Pembroke Dock had an even more famous visitor when, on 1 April 1944, General Dwight Eisenhower - later President of the USA but then Supreme Allied Commander - paid an unexpected visit to the American 110th Regiment in the town's Llanion Barracks.

Eisenhower arrived in Tenby by train and was then taken by fast military convoy, complete with howling sirens and motorbike outriders, to Pembroke Dock. Despite chilly, damp weather he climbed into the back of a jeep to address the men, promising to have a drink with them on the day they crossed the Rhine.

Famous visitors were one thing but for most American GIs the brief period they spent in Wales was an interlude before the real business of war began in earnest. It was an experience most of them never forgot.

Feel free to comment! If you want to have your say, on this or any other BBC blog, you will need to sign in to your BBC iD . If you don't have a BBC iD , you can here - it'll allow you to contribute to a range of BBC sites and services using a single .

Need some assistance? Read about BBC iD, or get some help with ing.

Links between the USA and Wales are lengthier and far more considerable than many people know. For example, five of the first six Presidents of the USA were of Welsh descent and the country has had no fewer than ten Welsh-connected Presidents in all - plus, briefly, the President of the Confederate States of America.

The Welshmen at the helm of the most powerful country in the world were:- John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Morrison Jnr, James Monroe, William Harrison, Abraham Lincoln, Benjamin Harrison, James A Garfield and Calvin Coolidge. The Confederate President was, of course, Jefferson Davis.

John Adams, the second ever President and the first one to reside in the White House, was able to trace his ancestry to the town of Pembroke in Pembrokeshire and to Penybanc Farm at Llanboidy in Carmarthenshire. The earliest reference to his family comes in 1422 when a distant ancestor, John Adams of Pembroke, married the daughter of Penybanc Farm and duly took over the business. David Adams, one of the later sons of Penybanc, was educated at Queen Elizabeth Grammar School in Carmarthen, took holy orders and in 1675 emigrated to America. Fifty years later his great grandson, the future President, was born.

John Adams' son, also called John, became the first and, for many years, the only son of a US President to also succeed to the Oval Office - a record that lasted until George W Bush succeeded his father a few years ago. John Quincy Adams became the sixth President in 1825.

Before that, however, there had been several other Presidents of Welsh descent. Amongthem was Thomas Jefferson who succeeded to the post in 1817. He was the main author and guiding light of the Declaration of Independence, a document that resonates with all the cadences and flowing poetry of the Welsh soul.

His origins are a little unclear but Jefferson himself said that his father came from the foothills of Snowdon and in 1933 a US State Department official unveiled a plaque at Llanfair Ceiriog, the inscription reading "To the memory of a great Welshman, Thomas Jefferson."

The fifth President and yet another man of Welsh descent, James Monroe, was the official who conceived and implemented the Monroe Doctrine, a policy that declared that any attempt to colonise land on the continent of North America would be regarded as an act of war.

Yet another Welsh connection came in the person of the ninth President, William Harrison who lasted just 32 days and became the first President to die in office. James Madison Jnr, the fourth President - who actually served two in office - was one of the Founding Fathers of the American nation and was the principal author of the US Constitution - another document that betrays its author's Welsh heritage in the style and quality of its composition.

Like Harrison, Abraham Lincoln, of course, also died in office, assassinated by John Wilkes Booth in April 1865. His Welsh lineage might be tentative and unclear but his surname comes from a fusion of Welsh and Latin, meaning "from the lake country."

Perhaps the most romantic of all the Welsh connected Presidents is Jefferson Davis who, after the succession of the southern states, was elected President of the Confederacy in February 1861. He had been Secretary of State for War and was a hero of the Indian Wars but had always viewed the southern states as a country within a country. The American Civil War was a long and bloody conflict, like all civil wars, and the eventual defeat of the southern states was inevitable.

Davis was captured two days after the surrender and was flung into prison where he was kept in irons for two years. His wife, a Welsh woman by the name of Varina Howell, campaigned tirelessly for his release and this was eventually granted. Jefferson Davis - named after Thomas Jefferson, one of the earliest Welsh Presidents - retired to New Orleans where he died, aged 82 years old.

Both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson - the only two Presidents to actually sign the Declaration of Independence - died on exactly the same day. It was 4 July 1826, the 50th anniversary of the g.