WHEN a secret decision was made by the British government in 1960, under pressure from US President Eisenhower, to allow an American Polaris base in Scotland, it was a political one made at the height of Cold War fear. Barely eight months later, in March 1961, a crowd of people gathered along the shoreline in the little town of Dunoon to watch the future arrive, in the form of the USS Proteus.

The US Navy base on the Holy Loch was to dominate Dunoon and the Cowal peninsula for the next thirty years. Views of its presence varied. The fears of many locals of the consequences of a nuclear submarine facility on their doorstep were amplified by huge demonstrations against nuclear weapons in the early 1960s. Yet people seemed to welcome the American service personnel and their families and the appeal of American life and glitz was great for many younger residents of a small Scottish town.

In this new edition, Andrene Messersmith, herself a child at the time of the US arrival, has compiled a wider collection of impressions and memoir from both sides of the Atlantic of what this major change meant for Dunoon.

In the present age of different power balances in the world, The American Years is a social history with resonance for today.

Foreword included to the 2003 edition by Rt Hon George Robertson, then Secretary General of NATO.

Andrene Messersmith grew up in Dunoon and was a schoolgirl when the US Navy arrived. She eventually married into an American family and she and her husband have now retired to Argyll. She is a member of a group that formed to record and preserve the history of the American Base and people’s memories of life during those decades. https://americanyearsrevisited.com