Last week I watched a program on National Geographic in the series 'Seconds from Disaster' which was about the crash of one of the first jet airliners - that of a BOAC Comet - which crashed in the Mediterranean near the Italian island of Elba in January 1954. On that plane was a respected Australian war correspondent
Chester Wilmot who worked for both the BBC and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation - who, along with all the other 34 people on board, was killed.
This prompted me to look up more about him and I discovered that he wrote just two books -
Tobruk 1941 and
The Struggle For Europe - both about WW2. The former book is available in digital format but the latter is not. However, I found a bookseller on Amazon who was selling a 'good' used hardback copy of the original printed edition from 1952 for just £3 plus delivery so I decided to invest. This arrived today and is as described in 'good condition' considering it is 65 years old.
However, I also found neatly folded up between the pages of the book, a newspaper cutting from August 30th 1952 (which I determined from the text in the cutting as there is no other date on it) reporting on the 10th Anniversary of the WW2 'Battle of Alam Halfa' which took place near El Alamein between the Allied troops of the English, led by Montgomery, and New Zealand and the German forces under Rommel with the Italians and which resulted in victory for the Allied forces. (image below) I have no idea which newspaper the cutting is from.
The book itself is some 750 pages in length and is a comprehensive history of the entire war in Europe. I now just have to find the time to read it. The book is also available as a reprint from 1997 on
Amazon, but I am happy with my copy from the original printing.
And all this from just watching an episode of 'Seconds from Disaster'