SORRY - SOLD OUT
This 27th volume of After the Battle, comprising issues 105 to 108, again presents a wide variety of topics. To tell the story of the French Resistance, Jean Paul Pallud focuses on the events in one department of France, the Haute-Savoie. He highlights the many acts of sabotage and armed resistance undertaken by the Maquis and other underground groups in the region, which were continued in the face of violent German retaliations, and culminated in the assembly of 500 resisters at Glières, high up in the mountains, in March 1944 in open defiance of the occupying forces. Another main feature is the battle for Guadalcanal, the turning point of the war in the Pacific. The amphibious landing by the US 1st Marine Division in August 1942 was followed by a six-month struggle with the Japanese for possession of the island. All the major battlegrounds associated with this savage jungle campaign — Red Beach, Henderson Field, Bloody Ridge, the Ilu and Matanikau rivers — are illustrated in our usual then and now style. Peter Flahavin, who journeyed to Guadalcanal to take the comparison photographs, in addition wrote an account that can be read as a guide to this historic battlefield. Directly linked to this Pacific story is that of the recovery and repatriation of 18 US marines, killed in the famous Makin raid in August 1942, who lay buried in an unmarked mass grave for 57 years. The German central interrogation centre for captured Allied aircrew at Oberursel — known as Dulag Luft — is the subject of an in-depth article by Charles Rollings. He describes the installation's set-up in 1939, its gradual growth as the numbers of captured airmen increased, the refined techniques used to cull information from the prisoners, and the sometimes spectacular intelligence scoops achieved by the interrogators. Two stories deal with small-unit actions from the 1944-45 campaign in Europe. The defence of a vital bridge across the Scheldt at Wetteren in Belgium by a small band of Royal Engineers from the 7th Armoured Division in September 1944 is described by Jean-Paul Marchal. Veteran John Gaunt of the 3rd Monmouthshires recalls the bloody battle for the German strong-point village of Broekhuizen in the Netherlands in October 1944. Other articles include the first-ever detailed investigation of aircraft crash sites on Malta; the recovery of a Hudson aircraft which crashed into the IJsselmeer inland sea in Holland while on a mission to drop SOE secret agents; the German coastal batteries in Denmark and Norway covering the strategic Skagerrak straits; a German underground nerve-gas factory near Frankfurt-am-Oder which later became a secret headquarters for the Red Army; and the nazi concentration camp of Natzweiler-Struthof in Alsace, France.
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