100 Special 100th Edition, After the Battle, After the Battle(1)
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//-->SPECIAL100thEDITIONNumber 100NUMBER 100Edited by Winston G. RamseyEuropean Editor: Karel MargryPublished by Battle of Britain PrintsInternational Ltd.,Church House, Church Street,London E15 3JA, EnglandTelephone: 0181-534 8833Fax: 0181-555 7567E-mail: afterthebattle@mcmail.comPrinted in Great Britain byTrafford Print Colour Ltd.,Shaw Wood Way, Doncaster DN2 5TB.© Copyright 1998After the Battleis published quarterly onthe 15th of February, May, August andNovember.United Kingdom Newsagent Distribution:Seymour Press Ltd., Windsor House, 1270 LondonRoad, Norbury, London SW16 4DH.Telephone: 0181-679 1899United States Distribution and Subscriptions:RZM Imports, PO Box 995, Southbury, CT, 06488Telephone: 1-203-264-0774Canadian Distribution and Subscriptions:Vanwell Publishing Ltd., 1 Northrup Crescent,St. Catharines, Ontario L2M 6P5.Telephone: (905) 937 3100 Fax: (905) 937 1760Australian Subscriptions and Back Issues:Technical Book and Magazine Company, Pty, Ltd.,289-299 Swanston Street, Melbourne, Victoria 3000.Telephone: 663 3951New Zealand Distribution:South Pacific Books (Imports) Ltd., 6 King Street,Grey Lynn, Auckland 2. Telephone: 762-142Italian Distribution:Tuttostoria, Casella Postale 395, 1-43100 Parma.Telephone: 0521 290 387, Telex 532274 EDIALB IDutch Language Edition:Quo Vadis, Postbus 3121, 3760 DC Soest.Telephone: 035 6018641In 1973, I purchased a Willys Jeep fromLawrence Brooks of Old Heathfield withthe intention of taking it to Normandy inJune that year. I had a vague idea of see-ing if it was possible to picture it in thesame locations as Jeeps which appearedin wartime photographs . . . but nothingmore. The vehicle had been first regis-tered to Prop Cars Ltd in May 1946 and Iwas told it had featured in several filmsincludingPatton — Lust for Glory(seeissue 7). The trip turned out to be amechanical nightmare with frequentbreakdowns and it was only because Ihad the expertise of my lifelong friend,Chris Stevens, that we were able to com-plete the tour from Le Havre to Cher-bourg. We had frequent stops for waterand to strip the carburettor, and on oneoccasion, when I had ventured ontoOmaha Beach (see rear cover), it refusedto start and we nearly lost it to theincoming tide! By then, I had the glim-mer of an idea for a magazine whichwould show what the battlefields werelike today so, once we had backed it upthe beach, I took a picture of the Jeep touse on the front cover.CONTENTSFront Cover:Flashback to 1973. On thecover of our first issue, we pictured ourJeep (LHK 634) on Omaha Beach;25 years later, your Editor had a nostalgicreunion with the old girl, since beautifullyrestored by Alan Holland.Back Cover:Sun . . . Sea . . . and a Jeep. Asit was at the timeAfter the Battlewasconceived.Photo Credits:Bob Bird:35 top, bottom left, bottomright.Channel Islands Occupation Society:47bottom left.Daily Telegraph:68 bottom.Dave Bishop:47 top.David C. Kelly:69 bottom.Deryk G. Wills:66 bottom.Express Newspapers:13 top.Flight:32 top.Fox Photos:3 top.IWM:4 centre; 18 top, centre left, bottomleft; 21 bottom; 29 top left, centre; 38bottom left; 51 bottom; 52 top left; 70 top.Jersey Evening Post:47 top centre left,top centre right, bottom centre right.Manfred Braünlich:55 bottom.Newsquest (North London):51 top.North News & Pictures:41 top.RAF Waddington:12 centre.Richard Perchard:47 bottom right.SPECIAL100th ANNIVERSARY ISSUEWITH EXTRA 16 PAGES2Soon after returning home, I purchased asecond Jeep (pictured on the cover ofourHistoric Military Vehicles Directoryand back cover of issue 6) from DaveGunn of Ilford and then disposed of thetroublesome LHK 634 to Sheila Jenner.(Later, when I met her on one of PeterGray’s tours, she castigated me for sell-ing her a pup. Sorry Sheila, do you for-give me? After all, everything’s fair inlove, war and selling motor cars!) InApril 1995, it came into the ownership ofAlan Holland of Lane End in Bucking-hamshire, who lovingly stripped it to itschassis, replacing many worn and bro-ken parts. At the time, he had no ideathat it had been featured on the cover ofAfter the Battleand it was only when hebought some back issues of Purnell’sSecond World War part-work that one ofour early advertising leaflets droppedout. On the miniature reproduction ofthe cover, he could just make out theregistration and Alan telephoned meexcitedly in September 1997. Immed-iately, I knew I had solved the problem ofwhat to put on the cover of this specialissue — a ‘then and now’ 25 years later!From the Editor . . .Welcome to this enlarged milestone editionofAfter the Battle.Over the past 25 years,many people have asked me how my interestin the Second World War evolved and whatwere the circumstances which led me to create‘ATB’. So here goes.Our lives are shaped by many events andexperiences, particularly during our ‘forma-tive’ years and two things stick out in mymemory. The first was that while I was still atschool I wanted to visit the scene of the Siegeof Sidney Street (in Whitechapel in EastLondon) to see what No. 100 looked like.The fact that a six-hour battle, between thearmy and police against two, or maybe three,anarchists, had taken place in an ordinarystreet in the East End in January 1911 hadcaptured my imagination after reading aboutit in the 1935 Silver Jubilee publication25Years,and I took the book along with meone day in the school holidays — it musthave been around 1954-55. Then, the housewas still standing but I remember being dis-appointed not to find it covered with bulletholes. (It was demolished in 1956 — see ourlatest book,The East End Then and Now.)The pictures which set me off on the I-wonder-what-it-looks-like-now trail back in the1950s. In 1911, Winston Churchill was the Home Secretary, this well-known picture ofhim being taken during the Siege of Sidney Street in East London.Little did I know then that some 40 years after my schoolboy visit to Sidney Street,I would be standing in my namesake’s place on the exact anniversary of the siege in1997. FromThe East End Then and Now,page 258.3In 1973, when I decided to visit Normandy with the Jeep, I con-tacted the Imperial War Museum at Lambeth, London, tochoose some wartime pictures to match up. However, I had leftit much too late to order prints as the delivery time in thosedays was several weeks. Generously, Ted Hine, the photo cura-tor, came to my rescue and said I could come in and copy someof the album pages, which I did with my mother’s camera onthe window shelf, hence the shadow on this print(left).With-out a close-up lens, the resulting pictures were barely moreThe second influence on me was, as I out-lined in my editorial in issue 25, the BBCtelevision series of 1959 in which war corre-spondents returned to the battlefields.Unfortunately, the BBC tell me that they nolonger hold a copy of theAfter the Battlepro-grammes but I can distinctly remember onescene where the wartime film merged intothe scene today. The ‘then and now’ aspectheld me enthralled but it was not until 1973that I actually went to France to try to see ifit was possible to find and match up picturestaken during the war. I pinched the nameand the rest, as they say, is history!The idea of a return visit to Normandy tocoincide with the anniversary of D-Day —June 6 — had taken shape the month before.What was to make this trip special was thedecision to travel in a wartime-vintage WillysJeep, restored to its former glory after sev-eral months hard work, which I hoped Icould photograph in the locations of the 1944invasion. Several dozen pictures had beenobtained from the Imperial War Museum inLondon and I wondered, in spite of thevague captioning, if one could still find thelocations and, using our Jeep as ‘set dress-ing’, take ‘then and now’ comparison photo-graphs.Prior to this trip I had always been just aholiday snapshot photographer using anAgfa Isolette III, purchased second-hand 15years previously for £10. I wanted to makeup a special album of the trip so I borrowed a35mm Mamiya. This was my first experiencewith an SLR camera and the built-in lightmeter seemed the ultimate in sophisticationafter always having taken photographs byfollowing the film instruction leaflet for‘cloudy bright’ or ‘cloudy dull’!During the trip it was evident that it waspossible — with effort — to find the wartimelocations and from this developed the germi-nation of an idea for a new magazine aboutthe Second World War based on the themeof comparison photographs. What made itpossible was the fact that since 1958 I hadbeen running the family printing business, soI felt that I could justify the time spent onresearch because it was helping to fillmachine time on the presses.However, my aspirations were quicklydashed when the enprints were returnedfrom the chemist. To my horror I saw thatmy absolute reliance on the meter in against-the-light, dull or rainy conditions had pro-duced poor-quality photographs, acceptableas snapshots but totally unsuitable for repro-duction.4than an inch square which didn’t help us in identifying the loca-tion where each had been taken.Right:That’s me on the leftholding the same print on a street in Caen. (Ted Hine’s staffwere invaluable as my knowlege at that time was very basicand I pay tribute to the help given to me in those days by JeffPavey (who managed to ‘charm’ my anorak off my back!); MikeWillis, long-time friend of Rose Coombs, with whom I workedon our first bookBefore Endeavours Fadein 1976, and AlanWilliams of motorbike fame.)Below:Chris Stevens seeking out another comparison, this time in Brettevillel’Orgueilleuse(above).This was one of the shots which was of good enough qualityto be used in issue 1 (page 28). Back-up Mini driven by my wife Jennifer on the right.Nevertheless, with the ‘bit between theteeth’, the idea of abandoning the magazineproject never entered my head. Followingthe advice of a friend, I splashed out £106 ona Minolta SRT 101 with the 55mm 1.7Rokkor lens to retake the pictures. Using aMini, we raced round the locations fromCherbourg to Le Havre, luckily now beingable to drive straight to each spot, and Iretook in two days what had taken ten dayson our first trip. This was a stop-click, whis-tle-stop tour but the advice of my photo-grapher friend to take several exposures ofeach view, altering the stop each time, was anew experience (and expense)!Right:We were so thrilled to get our firstedition off the press and Chris cameround to celebrate but Jennifer was ill inbed. Nevertheless, we got together inher bedroom for this shot. However,Chris had his own interests to look afterand from issue 2 I had to go it alone.Some time later, I gave Chris a poser tofind the location of the picture on page46 of issue 14. Billy Wright (on the right)gave him the clue and we went out totake the comparison in 1976.This shot of the Jeep in La Délivrande (I spelt it wrong in issue 1) came out too bad tobe used. Fortunately, I had an alternative angle which was included on page 29.Chris with our future Deputy Editor on the left, then agedeight. On subsequent visits, I needed to take Jennifer with meto read the map, so Gordon had to come along as well. Taxinspectors are adverse to allowing expenses for taking one’swife on a business trip but I convinced him that I couldn’t drive,read the map, do the research, take the photographs, etc, etc.However, it was unheard of to get expenses for an eight-year-old child but I achieved the impossible by saying that I neededhim to stand in the pictures which is why he appears in manyof the early issues — to convince a British taxman!5
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