After The Battle Magazine Issue188 Back Issue

THE BATTLE FOR FESTUNG POSEN, 1945 — In late January 1945, the Soviet Red Army first encircled and then laid siege to the Polish city of Poznan in western Poland. The Germans, who judged Poznan — or Posen as they called it — very much a German city (it had formed part of Prussia for over a century) decided to defend it as a Festung (fortress). Tomasz Zgoda is our author. From the Editor — A round-up and update on previous stories from After the Battle. Trent Park, Cockfosters — Group Captain Samuel Felkin explains that on the outbreak of war, Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas Kendrick, then a major, set up a five-man team, comprising army, navy and air force intelligence officers with the specific task of interrogating captured enemy personnel. Initially based in the Tower of London, they soon outgrew this facility, so a stately mansion in the grounds of an 800-acre park at Cockfosters was procured and soon became the first outstation of the Combined Services Detailed Interrogation Centre (CSDIC). Bomb Disposal Tragedy at Eastbourne — It is not often that the complete file concerning a wartime incident has survived, together with the minute-by-minute messages, so it was very fortunate that historian Andy Saunders was able to retrieve this account from a clear-out of council records in Eastbourne. After a raid on the town on October 26, 1940, two bombs failed to explode. The telephone messages retrieved describe what happened next. German Crashes in Ireland — Justin Horgan and Paddy Cummins explain how Southern Ireland declared itself neutral in September 1939 and subsequently how they dealt with German aircraft crashes there throughout the war.