Christopher Finn MPhil
Christopher Finn served in the RAF for 33 years as a navigator, primarily on the Buccaneer, and was a weapons and tactics specialist. A graduate of the Joint Services’ Defence College, in 2000 he gained an MPhil in International Relations from Cambridge University. His last 5 years in the RAF were spent at Shrivenham, firstly on the Directing Staff of the Advanced Command and Staff Course and then, on promotion to Group Captain, as the RAF’s Director of Defence Studies. In this role he lectured extensively on air power to UK and international audiences, published articles on air power and ran the RAF’s staff ride programme.
On leaving the RAF in 2005 he spent ten years as a Senior Lecturer in Air Power Studies with Kings College London, later Portsmouth University, based at the RAF College Cranwell.
Chris’ primary expertise is in the influence of air power on the battlefield and areas such as joint fires, logistics, command and control, intelligence, campaign planning, leadership at all levels and the political aspects of warfare. However, he has also covered maritime battles (Malta & NEPTUNE) and land battles (Monte Cassino & Berlin).
Chris lectures on Aviation and Military History to a wide range of audiences including, recently, an on-line lecture on the role of the Royal Artillery in the Imjin River Battle of the Korean War. He is currently writing a chapter on Bomber Command tactics for a book on the Combined Bomber Offensive to be published in 2021.
He is a Fellow of both the Royal Aeronautical Society and the Higher Education Academy, and works as a volunteer Guide at the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight.
A member of the Guild since 2008 Chris gained his Badge in 2009, becoming a validator the following year. He has organised a number of Guild Events, the last being a Guild Recce to Berlin in 2019. He became the Chief Validator in 2015 and the Director of Validation (now Accreditation Director) in 2017. He was elected the fourth Fellow of the Guild at the 2020 Annual Conference.
John Cotterill
John Cotterill is a self-employed battlefield tour guide. He retired from the Army in 2014 after 37 years regular service in the Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters Regiment and their successors, the Mercian Regiment. He has served all over the world including operational service in Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan. He has been leading battlefield tours since 1994 and has guided military groups, veterans, schoolchildren and others. He has been lucky enough to guide tours from Singapore to Stalingrad and from Tanzania to Tunisia. John has led tours to the battlefields of the American War of Independence, the Peninsular War, the Crimean War, the Great War, the Spanish Civil War and the Second World War. As well as battlefield studies for military units and formations he guides many family battlefield tours in which he re-traces the steps of a family’s ancestors on the battlefield.
He joined the International Guild of Battlefield Guides in its infancy (Member Number 4) and was awarded Badge Number 10 in 2004. He continues to organise events for the Guild and was a member of the Guild Validation Team for 15 years. In 2025 he became a Fellow of the Guild. John recruited and directed the two hundred volunteers who ran “The Trent to the Trenches” which was Nottinghamshire’s Great War Centenary Exhibition. It received over 100,000 visitors in the 4 months in which it ran in Nottingham Castle in 2014. He is now on the team that is assembling Nottinghamshire’s Second World War Roll of Honour. John was born in Derbyshire and lives in Nottingham. He is a member of the Western Front Association and the Campaign for Real Ale.
Andy Johnson
Andy Johnson served for 29 years in the RAF, including 17 years on the Boeing Sentry AWACS, with operational flying in the Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts. He left the RAF in 2009 to become a full-time battlefield guide.
Andy has guided school, adult and military groups, small and large, to visit First and Second World War battlefields, with a particular interest in Normandy, including the D-Day beaches, air operations, and the frequently neglected inland fighting. He has also led tours from Arnhem and the airborne carpet to the 1945 battles on and across the Rhine. He has been privileged on three occasions to take veterans to their battlefields in Normandy and Monte Cassino. What an honour!
With a flying background, Andy has a huge interest in the air war and has led tours to sites related to the Great War in the air, Fighter Command, the Combined Bomber Offensive, the Battle of the Atlantic and the German secret weapons programmes. He enjoys bringing the air war to life, not just from the point of view of the commanders, planners, ground crew and aircrew, but also that of those at the receiving end.
An interest in the Air War naturally leads to an interest in National Socialist Germany, including the development and deployment of the V-Weapons, through the concentration camp and forced labour systems to the Final Solution. It is a difficult but important subject.
For most of his adult life, Andy has been a traveller and he has travelled widely in India, leading to a deep interest in the history of Great Britain’s involvement in that country. He has led groups looking at the story of the Indian Corps on the Western Front.
Andy completed the International Guild of Battlefield Guides validation programme in November 2011 and holds Badge No 52. He has acted as Validation Secretary since 2020 and in 2025 he was elected a Fellow of the Guild at the 2025 Annual Conference.
Dudley Giles
Dudley Giles joined the British Army as an officer in the Royal Military Police in 1979 and retired 33 years later in 2012. He began his guiding career in 1992 and was elected as a Fellow of the International Guild of Battlefield Guides in 2026.
As a graduate of the British Army Staff College, and having served in a variety of formation headquarters (from 1* through to 5*), Dudley’s particular strength is in the delivery of staff rides and battlefield studies for formation headquarters within NATO. This work has taken him from the ice and snow of the battlefields of Finland and Norway in the north to the dusty plains of Afghanistan in the south.
In 2008 Dudley began a seven year association with the Help for Heroes Big Battlefield Bike Ride and this eventually led to him establishing his own cycle tour company (Battlefields by Bike). Throughout his guiding career Dudley has successfully planned and led numerous battlefield tours for individuals and families wanting to retrace the footsteps of their ancestors on the battlefields of the First and Second World Wars. (And, as a previous instructor with the Canadian Armed Forces, has a particular interest and empathy for the Canadian experience in these wars.)
Dudley joined the Guild soon after its creation and whilst serving as NATO’s senior military police staff officer in SHAPE. He began the accreditation process almost immediately, but needed to go to Afghanistan for nine months to find the time to complete all of the written assignments. He was awarded Badge Number 26 in 2007.
Dudley previously served on the Guild’s Management Board as its Director of Development and has been a long standing member of the Guild Validation Team. In 2022 he and fellow guide Steve Smith (Badge #17) created an online training course for individuals wishing to embark on a career as battlefield guides (www.battlefieldguidetraining.com) and, four years later, nearly 40 students have now completed this training. Dudley and Steve are now eagerly awaiting the first of their students to complete the Guild’s accreditation process.