SORRY - SOLD OUT
A fine diversity of subjects and theatres of operation is contained in this, the 24th bound volume of After the Battle. From the death of the legendary Chindit leader Major-General Orde Wingate in Burma, to the discovery by the US Army of a vast monetary and art hoard at the Merkers mine in Germany; from the bravery of an RAF VC over Arnhem in Holland, to the somewhat contentious execution of a German general for war crimes in northern Italy. The capture of billions in gold, silver and currency at the Kaiseroda mine at Merkers and the quarry at Buchenwald concentration camp, is recounted from its original discovery by elements of General George Patton's Third army in April 1945 to the division of the spoils by the Tripartite Commission for the Restitution of Monetary Gold which only settled the final claim from Albania in 1996. Two major stories cover the campaign in Italy: the landings at Salerno in September 1943 and the ill-fated OSS Operation 'Ginny' in the La Spezia area in March 1944 when a 15-man demolition team was landed near Carpineggio. The whole group was compromised and captured and subjected to the Führerbefehl issued the previous year which stated that all commando-type troops were to be shot. After the war, General Anton Dostler was tried for war crimes — the first German general to face such charges — and he paid the supreme penalty in front of a US Army firing squad. Other stories featured include the two major explosions which took place at the Royal Gunpowder Factory at Waltham Abbey in 1940, little known incidents which claimed the lives of ten men. The recovery of missing servicemen — American soldiers in the Ardennes and a Belgian RAF pilot in Shropshire, England — are investigated in full as is the final flight of Flight Lieutenant David Lord, posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for bravery over Arnhem in September 1944. His crash site was identified by After the Battle in 1996. Another crash location pinpointed by After the Battle is that of a Messerschmitt Bf 109 which crashed in London's East End in the Battle of Britain, during the Luftwaffe's first mass daylight raid on the capital on September 7, 1940. On the other side of the world, we examine in depth the last flight of the legendary Chindit leader Major-General Orde Wingate, who perished in an aircraft crash in northern Burma in March 1944, and also investigate the loss of a Beaufort in Australia. We visit the Pacific islands of Nauru and Viti Levu, and go to Quebec to look at the various top-level conferences which took place in Canada. This volume also features a German heavy gun battery preserved in its entirety in Norway; the story of the capture of Ghent by the 'Desert Rats' in September 1944; a report on the long-delayed award of Congresional Medals of Honor to black US Servicemen; and moves in London to create a memorial on the Thames riverside to the victims of the Blitz. We also reveal for the very first time the true identity of 'The Man Who Never Was'. All presented in the 'then and now' theme of comparison photographs for which After the Battle is known.
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