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This book looks at the last year of the War in Europe, from D-Day to the liberation of the Channel Islands. The book covers a somewhat random selection of topics. We move quite quickly from D-Day to the Falaise Gap, cover the Liberation of Paris and Market Garden and brief mentions of the battle of the Bulge and the final days of the campaign. The V-1 Flying bombs get a chapter, as does the bombing of Dresden. Elsewhere it feels a bit scattergun – one chapter looks at a massive explosion in a UK arms dump, another at Christmas 1944, and another at escape attempts by German POWs.
The individual chapters are all good, often using eyewitness accounts to illustrate their topic. Some of the minor topics are actually the more valuable chapters, in that they cover material that isn’t already quite familiar – the Freckleton disaster, where an Allied aircraft crashed into a primary school, or the issues caused by US army attempts to impose segregation. The book will probably be of use to someone unfamiliar with the events of the last year of the war, with its mix of chapters on the battlefront and the home front reminding us that more was going on than just the fighting.
Chapters
1 – D-Day – 6 June 1944
2 – The Gates of Hell
3 – Throes of a Life and Death Crisis
4 – The Liberation of Paris
5 – One Bridge Too Far
6 – Freckleton – A Grim Reminder
7 – Inglorious Career, Inglorious End
8 – No Colour Bar in This Country…
9 – When Do We Get Home?
10 – The Battle of the Flying Bombs
11 – Service Without Thought of Reward
12 – The Day The World Exploded
13 – Christmas Returns Again
14 – King, Queen, Everyone Else … Are At One
15 – Escape from Camp 198
16 – Flying Over a Sheet of Fire
17 – Yalta - Unfinished Buisiness?
18 – Nothing that Dante Could Conceive…
19 – Final Curtain
20 – One This Great Day
21 – Deliverance for the Channel Islands
Author: Anton Rippon & Nicola Rippon
Edition: Hardcover
Pages: 224
Publisher: Pen & Sword
Year: 2024