This 33rd bound volume of After the Battle (issues 129 to
132) includes major features on the battle for Florence in mid-July 1944, and
for Leipzig in April 1945 which was one of the last big German cities to be
captured by the American army in World War II.
We also visit Papua New
Guinea where in February 1944 the US Fifth Air Force despatched a force of 156
light, medium and heavy bombers to attack the Japanese base of Kavieng on New
Ireland; France to describe the commemoration of the clandestine Allied
parachutists who jumped in the Alps during the Second World War in Operation
'Spindle'; Italy where in April 1945 the 2nd New Zealand Division launched an
attack from its bridgehead across the Sillaro river near Sesto Imolese in the
course of which Lance-Corporal John Tucker of the 27th Battalion knocked out two
German Panther tanks but was cut down by Spandau fire while attacking a third,
and to Germany, the location of Flossenbürg, one of the deadliest Nazi
concentration camps where at least 30,000 perished.
Daniel Taylor,
author of Villers-Bocage Through the Lens, has revisited that town and presents
a re-appraisal of the battle when the Sharpshooters came up against the German
tank ace Michael Wittmann.
The underwater discoveries of the cruiser
Charybdis and the destroyer Limbourne 63 years after they were sunk by German
torpedoes in the English Channel, is contrasted by a trip back in time to the
Desert Training Center established by the US Army in California/Arizona in 1942
under General George S. Patton to prepare troops for warfare against the German
Afrikakorps in North Africa. We also explore the labyrinth of tunnels beneath
the medieval Dover Castle on the white cliffs facing the Channel, used as a
secret headquarters ever since Admiral Ramsay masterminded the evacuation from
Dunkirk in 1940.
We also tell the stories of the controversial war
memorial in Tokyo - the Yasukuni Jinja shrine - a legacy of Japan's pre-war
union of religion and state, and, controversial for reasons of grandeur, the
National World War II Memorial in Washington inaugurated in May 2004 to honour
all those that served, fought and died during the Second World War.
It
was also in Washington during the American Civil War that the estate surrounding
Arlington House, situated on a hilltop overlooking the Potomac river, was
requisitioned by the Union Army to create what is now probably the best known
national cemetery in the world.
Other features cover the end of a
Halifax crew over Germany and the worst aircraft crash in the UK during the war
when an American B-24 Liberator bomber came down in Freckleton in rural
Lancashire killing 61 people.
Finally, Jean Paul Pallud tells the story
of the Norwegian King who withdrew to Great Britain on June 7, 1940 following
the German invasion of his country, and takes us through to his return on June
7, 1945 . . . five years to the day of his departure. Plus our From the Editor
feature which contains readers' letters and follow-up stories from previous
issues.
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