Last year my father gave me 252 issues (10 volumes) of The War Illustrated which my grandparents faithfully had delivered from the 16th September 1939 to 11th April 1947. The series actually consisted of 255 issues, but three seemed to be missing. Just before Christmas he found one more issue, meaning that we are now just missing numbers 246 and 247 of volume 10. Another task for this year is to see if I can get hold of the missing issues to complete the set.The magazines are much richer in detail than I imagined they would be, with detailed maps and commentary along with dozens of photos and war artist pictures in each issue. Exactly 70 years this week, Issue 19 (right) concentrated on the Soviet attacks on the Finnish (the Soviets are the enemy, a situation reversed later in the war, and in the final stages the Finns swapped to the allies side), the pace of British shipbuilding, pictures of the Graf Spee sinking off of Montevideo's harbour, the terrible things the Nazis were doing in Czechoslovakia and Poland, the value of horses to the war effort, and a dozen other small stories. Collectively the issues are a fantastic resource and one day I hope to put them to use. For the time being I'm just content to browse and learn and try and locate those two missing issues.
1 comment:
What a great treasure! I hope you find the missing copies. My parents were both evacuees from London during the war. My mom still speaks fondly of the farm couple who took her and her siblings in. I suspect my father's experience was less enjoyable as he rarely mentions it.
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