It was nearly half a century ago that After the Battle first began visiting the battlefields of the Second World War, matching up photographs of the period with their present-day comparisons. Our ‘then and now’ theme caught on with like-minded readers around the world, all interested to know what the places looked like today — as we say ‘keeping history alive’.

Searching for the locations where the wartime captions were imprecise, took much time, and there were occasions when a whole day might be spent in pin-pointing where a particular photograph had been taken. No stone was left unturned if a particular comparison was important to illustrate the story, even if it meant a special visit to take one photo.

Most of the battlefields have changed over the years so it has been our intention where possible to illustrate many of the places with new colour comparisons rather than use those in the original story, many of which were taken in the old black and white days.

Since we launched our first edition in August 1973, After the Battle has travelled around the globe and has covered hundreds of battles — over 750 at the last count – and taken thousands of photographs, covering major operations down to individual exploits. Selecting a cross-section of just a few from the stories that we have covered has not been easy, but we hope that you will find some of your favourites within the pages of this volume, covering the best of After the Battle.