SORRY - SOLD OUT
War crimes form the backdrop for two major articles in this bound volume of After the Battle. The liberation of the German concentration camp at bergen-Belsen is the focus of an in-depth study, timed to coincide with the 50th annversary of the liberation in April 1945. Detailed examination of the barren site today — where only the mute testimony of the forbidding mass graves of its inmates bears witness to the past — is coupled with annotated aerial photographs and plans, giving a complete overview of the complex. The trials of the camp's overlords and staff are also covered, coupled with British army eyewitness accounts of the liberation and aftermath, including the terrible clearance operations that had to be speedily effected in an effort to save the lives of the remaining inmates. The other war crime investigated in detail is that committed by the Russians on the entire Polish officer corps held as POWs in the spring of 1940. In this case, the Germans found themselves in a somewhat novel rôle of accuser when they discovered the mass graves of about a third of the victims at Katyn, near Smolensk, in April 1943. Detailed coverage with comparison photographs of the scene today give the reader an awful insight into what is perhaps the greatest single abuse of prisoners-of-war in the last war. We also cover the fate of the remaining prisoners, murdered at two other sites in the former USSR — at Kharkov and Jiednoje. Their graves were only discovered in the summer of 1990, after the final admission of guilt by the Russians, confirmed by papers from state archives. Another major feature in this volume is the audacious attempt by troops from Patton's Third Army to rescue American prisoners-of-war, George Patton's son-in-law among them, from the Hammelburg POW camp, some 50 miles behind enemy lines. The escapade not only failed in its object of rescue, but it got John Walters, the real target of the raid, wounded in the fracas at the camp. It also resulted in the annihalation of the rescue force and the killing or capture of most of its members. We retraced the exact route of Task Force Baum, from its start point at Schweinheim, to its destruction at the Hammelburg army training ranges where we found a unique survivor of the raid, one of the task force's M4A3 Sherman tanks, still languishing on the firing range. Interviews with survivors and German eyewitnesses, many never published before, give a unique insight into this fascinating sideshow from the last days of the war in Europe. Other articles cover recovery stories such as that of missing Australian servicemen engaged on behind-the-lines maritime sabotage in the Pacific with their reburial in Kranji War Cemetery and the recovery of the remains of the famous B-24 Liberator bomber the 'Lady Be Good' from the Lybian Desert. The battle for the Greek island of Leros is examined as is the wartime US Marine Corps career of film star Lee Marvin. A round-up of letters concerning previous stories and readers' discoveries is also included.
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