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Indeed, this book shows us how one man's pioneering commitment to aviation archaeology ultimately serves as a unique tribute to thousands of young souls both lost and found of the Battle of Britain and the Blitz.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49622270214417,"sku":"GOR011870118","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51356582150417,"sku":"GOR010464982","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52738425323793,"sku":"GOR014605994","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/152671258X.jpg?v=1751430092"},{"product_id":"from-the-battlefield-to-the-big-screen-book-melody-foreman-9781526737717","title":"From the Battlefield to the Big Screen","description":"Look closely behind the lives of the stars who appeared in a host of legendary war films and discover how memories of their real-life experiences in the armed forces were haunted with heartbreak and yet filled with extraordinary heroism. 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Keen not to 'shirk their duties at home', and against advice from the British Consul, they made their way back to Blighty.  Olivier joined the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm as a pilot. Then with Churchill's approval he directed and starred in powerful propaganda films, including Shakespeare's Henry V. In 1943 the beautiful Vivien Leigh ruined her health by enduring the brutalities of the North African climate to entertain the troops in the desert. Meantime, Dirk Bogarde was a British Army intelligence officer seconded to the pioneering RAF Medmenham where he studied aerial photographs and pinpointed enemy targets for Bomber Command. As Lieutenant van den Bogaerde he was posted to France just after D-Day. He went on to star in many leading war films such as Appointment in London (1953) and King and Country (1964). Years later in 1991 Sir Dirk Bogarde was interviewed by the author of this book. He had witnessed the horrors of Belsen in April 1945 and said it changed his attitude to life forever.  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What he discovered over the decades that followed went far beyond the tangled wreckage of military aircraft, both fighters and bombers. For with each of the thousands of RAF and Luftwaffe artefacts he unearthed, came the intricate weave of life stories linking the valiant and the brave, the living and the dead.  Included among the items he has recovered from the many wreck sites he has investigated, was a mud-cloaked control column from a Spitfire with its gun button still switched to firing mode, a piece of Dornier Do 17 fuselage bearing the fatal bullet holes which led it to crash to the of earth of south-east England, a pilot's waistcoat once used to stop the drafts and rattles in a Hurricane cockpit, blood-stained maps from a Luftwaffe bomber, and a buckled tail fin from a Me 110 bearing the unmistakable symbol of the swastika.  Now in this exclusive biography, created from Terry's original notes and photographs stretching back almost seventy years, we learn not only about the historical significance of his own story as a wreck-hunter but the importance of remembering the lives of the men who fought in the skies above Britain in those desperate days of the Second World War.  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