Welcome to the International Guild of Battlefield Guides

As we start a new Membership Year we have 18 active accreditation candidates and eight awaiting the successful completion of Assignment 1.  Whilst those figures are identical to those of a year ago only three of the active candidates are new ones.  So, we need to encourage more members, especially new ones, to undertake the Accreditation Process, which is now open to all members.

I therefore thought it was time to deliver a webinar explaining in some depth exactly what the Accreditation Process is, to the whole Guild audience and not just those who attend AGMs and hear my annual reports on the Process.

The webinar will cover:

The background to Accreditation.
What the Accreditation Process is.
And what it isn't.
How it works.
The role of the validators and verifiers.
How it links into the Guild's Education Programme.
What our expectations of the candidates are.
A Summary and a Conclusion.
An open forum.

I look forward to seeing as many members as possible attending on the 20th of May, especially new members and those undertaking, or considering undertaking, the Accreditation Process.

Using a walking tour of Dresden, Andy Johnson explains why and how the RAF Dresden raid took place, and he will discuss sources. This is an adaptation of Andy’s successful Fellowship presentation at the January 2025 Annual Conference

Jonathan Davy is a semi-retired pilot with 40 years’ experience of military and civilian flying.  He served for 26 years in the RAF, undertaking roles as varied as annoying the Army on C-130 Hercules transports, nurturing proto-Top Guns on Tucano and Hawk trainers, and turning kerosene into noise and stress on the Jaguar and Typhoon.  Deciding 9g hurt too much in his mid-forties, he swapped his g-suit for a high-speed armchair in Virgin Atlantic Boeing 747s and 787s for a decade.  When that became too boring and life-shortening, he gave the keys back to Richard Branson and is now discovering all the ways civilian trainee pilots can try to kill him in the mighty Cessna 152.

He has always been a ‘war bore’; a week in ‘tactical conditions’ (for the RAF) on the Catterick training
area in 1988 sparked an ongoing interest in the realities of trench warfare. He has been visiting
the Western Front since 1991, started taking friends and family to the battlefields in 2011 and
joined the Guild in 2019. He is currently working through the Accreditation process as a very
under-employed sole trader.

Archaeology in the Great War – From Macedonia, Palestine, and the Dardanelles, through to the Roman Gallic wars, the troglodyte nature of the First World War frequently came into contact with the Ancient world.  Clive Harris will tell the story of not only the discoveries uncovered during trench construction, but the fascinating and varied lives of the archaeologists who served throughout it.

The Golf Championships are open to all members and their guests - more details here.

To be on the site of a battle, with a knowledgeable and experienced guide can lead us to a profound understanding of the challenges faced by both sides in that action, of how events unfolded and of the outcomes. In that much-used Guild phrase, we can ‘smell the cordite’. One other element is vital to the process of enlarging not only our understanding but also our imaginations and capacity for empathy: the words of those who were there. We can find these in their letters, their diaries, their memoirs and their poems. Viv Whelpton will look at a small fraction of the material available for our use as guides, chiefly, although not exclusively, from the Great War on the Western Front, and suggest how it can be called into play to enhance the stories we tell.

Intention:

The focus of this recce is the 1942 raiding actions undertaken at both Dieppe and Bruneval.  There will be a visit to St Valery-en-Caux, where the French Army fought alongside the 51st Highland Division in June 1940.

We will travel out on the DFDS overnight ferry Friday from Newhaven to Dieppe and return Sunday night - a weekend recce.  This would be Friday 24th night sailing, arriving Saturday morning, We will kick-off with a pre-breakfast special raid on Yellow Beach, and try to recreate some of the atmosphere that No 3 Commando and Peter Young must have experienced in August 1942!  We will look at aspects of the No 4 Commando landing and actions on the Orange Beaches.

The Sunday will concentrate on John Frost's  Bruneval Raid.

Returning on the Sunday night ferry arriving in the wee hours of Monday 27th October.  Of course that happens to be the weekend where the clocks go back!

The Richard Holmes Lecture is given annually; sponsorship rotates between the Battlefields Trust, The British Commission for Military History and the Guild.  This year’s sponsor is the Battlefields Trust.  Subject to confirmation, the Richard Holmes Memorial Lecture 2025 will be held on the afternoon of Saturday 1 November 2025 at a venue in Central London.  It is hoped that remote participation/access will be available.

The speaker will be Dr Ismini Pells of the Oxford University Department of Continuing Education and a noted specialist on the British Civil Wars.  Her exact title is to be confirmed but will be centred on her current research focus on the treatment of “war crimes” and atrocities in the British Civil War period.

This will include Battlefield of Blenheim , the German Great War Museum at Ingolstadt and Dachau Concentration Camp. 

Note that April 1 is a place marker in the calendar rather than the actual start date which is to be advised

For more information contact the organiser John Cotterill via the Guild Secretary, or via the Member contact details

In France in 1916, plans were being drawn up to relieve the pressure on Verdun; in Dublin plans were being finalised for an insurrection.  The Easter Rising would see ordinary men and women become national heroes who would shape Ireland’s destiny.
Join me in Dublin on May 1st to 3rd 2026 as we look at various locations and learn about the people involved.

THIS RECCE IS BEING PUT BACK TO 2026 SO AS NOT TO CLASH WITH OTHER EVENTS. THE DATES ARE MERELY A PLACE SAVER AND ARE TO BE CONFIRMED.

Operation Frankton was the famous WW2 raid on German blockade running shipping in Bordeaux, France.  The raid was carried out by the Royal Marines Boom Patrol Detachment (RMBPD), which was part of Combined Operations.  Inserted by the submarine HMS Tuna, five folding kayaks, (Cockleshells) paddled up the Gironde and attacked the cargo ships with limpet mines.  The recce is a detailed study of the intelligence, planning, execution and outcomes of a strategic mission that ended with only two of the ten men surviving the mission, including “Blondie” Haslar and Bill Sparks, (who used an MI9 escape line), with six being executed by the Germans and two dying from hypothermia.

The St Nazaire raid (Operation Chariot) was an attack by Combined Operations to destroy the dry dock in the port of St Nazaire to prevent it being used by the German battleship Tirpitz and force her to return to Northern Germany for maintenance.