Are you looking for a professional guide to take you on a battlefield tour? Are you working as a battlefield guide, would you like to find out more about becoming validated as a battlefield guide?
The International Guild of Battlefield Guides is the foremost organisation dedicated to touring the battlefields. We enable guides and historians to share information, expertise and knowledge; we help visitors to find accredited battlefield guides who can help them to explore the past. We all have one thing in common: a love of military history and a desire to ensure the sacrifices of past generations in war are not forgotten.
Our Honorary Members include Tonie and Valmai Holt, the pioneers of battlefield guiding, and our Guild President is the award-winning historian and author, Dr. Spencer Jones.
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Find out more about the International Guild of Battlefield Guides’ Accrediation Progamme, and all the associated benefits of being a Guild Member.
Coming Up
Special Forces in the UK
The Guild Special Forces recce will take place on the 11th and 12th September 2021 in the Poole area.
The theme of the recce is the development of Special Forces capabilities during WW2 and will study the Special Operations Executive, The Auxiliary Units, the Special Raiding Force, Special Forces Communications, Air support to SF operations, MI9, the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry, the COPPs and Operation Frankton.
This promises to be a packed weekend with lots of historical info and a fun but challenging quiz night. You will be home on Sunday in time for tea and medals!
Contact Bob Shaw to reserve a place.
Somme Recce (Provisional)
Taking a Guild recce format with participating Guild members passing on their knowledge of the battlefield and tour tips based on experience. Participants will be invited to share their knowledge with the group as we visit possible "stands" around the battlefields.
Newcomers to the Guild and battlefield guiding on the Western Front need not be concerned that your knowledge may not match that of experienced members. That is the whole point of recces to gain information and you will be surprised that even the smallest piece of knowledge, even if thought to be in another area, may be of considerable interest to your fellow members. Apart from that, the camaraderie of members is fabulously infectious!
This is five-day recce to the Somme under recce leaders John Cotterill & Paul Oldfield.
An itinerary based on last year's postponed recce is expected to be followed (note days in this itinerary do not correspondent to 2021 days!)
Guild Christmas Lunch 2021
A great opportunity to catch up at the end of a battlefield guiding season and at the Union Jack Club, Waterloo, London as usual. Full details will be provided later in the year.
Guild Portuguese Peninsular War Recce – Rescheduled Dates
This Recce had been scheduled to take place in April 2020 but was postponed as Europe went into Covid 19 lock-down which prevented all but non-essential travel. The recce has now been provisionally rescheduled to 2-7 March 2022
Please contact the organiser if you are interested in going if you were not down to go on the original recce dates as there may be spaces available.
This 6 day Guild Recce visits the battlefield of Bussaco where Wellington’s strategic genius saw the demise of Massena. We walk Wellington’s early battle sites of Rolica and Vimeiro and contemplate his vision and strategy at the Lines of Torres Vedras. We examine Wellington’s decision making at Oporto where Nosey’s army routed Soult’s French into full retreat.
The intent of the reconnaissance is to visit and consider main battlefield stands, suitable hotels, restaurants, museums and relevant places of interest in order to conduct future successful tours. We will have fun and certainly fair better than our ancestors who soldiered and suffered here during the Napoleonic Wars.
EOD, Malta
The Guild recce to Malta will take place in April 2022. The theme of the recce is the defence of Malta during WW2, with the emphasis being on the Explosive Ordnance Disposal capability of the islands. To provide background and context, it will also cover air and sea campaigns, the experience of the Maltese population and the Axis plans to invade the islands. There will also be a presentation on the siege of Malta in 1565.
Despite being the most bombed place on earth in WW2, Malta is a beautiful island with experiences and sights to suit everybody from narrow meandering streets with baroque churches, through medieval towers to some of the oldest known human structures in the world.
The islands have rightly been described as an open-air museum with superb weather, fantastic beaches and 7,000 years of intriguing history.
To register an interest contact Bob Shaw.