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Description

Czech-Published Map Celebrating the Victories of the 575th Motor Ambulance Company, Published in Pilsen in 1945.

Fascinating separately issued map of Western Europe focusing on the movements and exploits of the American 575th Motor Ambulance Company, on its tour from the UK, to Omaha Beach, through Paris, to the Battle of the Bulge, on to Czechoslovakia and V-E Day in Pilsen.

The map is of course rather intriguing because it was published in Pilsen, which was liberated by the Americans, but which then fell under the Iron Curtain with the 1948 Communist takeover.

This is a typical triumphal American military pictorial map, in that it includes cartoons of destroyed German tanks, marching American soldiers, Allied bombers flying toward Berlin, but it is very unusual that it was published in Czechoslovakia immediately after the war. The blue-ink stamp at the upper right translates to English as: "FIRST PRINTED BY A PRINTSHOP IN PILSEN 1945 COPY OF AN AUTHENTIC MAP"

In the lower-left and right corner of the map are the V Corp and First United States Army insignia (the latter depicted prior to the design change in 1950).

The 575th Ambulance Company landed on Omaha Beach on June 12th, 1944.