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John Cotterill is a self employed battlefield guide for families ,military groups, veterans, civilian clubs, individuals and schools. He was a founder member of the Guild of Battlefield Guides in 2003, was badged in 2004 (Badge 10) and was a Guild validator for 15 years. He became a Fellow of the Guild in 2025. John served as a regular officer in the Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters Regiment and their successors the Mercian Regiment for 37 years. He saw active service in Ulster, the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan and inactive service on four continents. He lives in Nottingham and is an active member of the Western Front Association, the Soldiers, Sailors and Airmans Families Association (SSAFA) and his Regimental Association. John’s particular specialities are taking families to retrace the steps of their Great War or WW2 ancestors and, for military groups, writing and delivering problem solving exercises that allow participants to “re-fight” battles of the past. He has guided groups on battlefields from Tanzania to Tunisia and from Stalingrad to Singapore.

Originally commissioned into The Gordon Highlanders, I served for twenty years as an infantry officer in the British Army. This included tours at regimental duty as a rifle platoon and close reconnaissance platoon commander, adjutant and company commander. I have also served as an aide de-camp, infantry tactics adviser to the Kuwaiti Army, close reconnaissance instructor at the Land Warfare Centre and a staff officer at brigade and divisional levels.

As a civilian, I have worked in West Africa as a security sector reform consultant to the UN; then as a humanitarian programme manager and operations director reducing the negative impacts of rogue ex-combatant groups small arms, ammunition and unexploded ordnance in conflict-prone communities.

My military service, including operational tours in Northern Ireland, Iraq, Sierra Leone, Afghanistan and my time working in Africa has given me a solid grounding in the theory and conduct of military operations and the impact of war. I have a Masters degree in Military Strategic Studies and I am a graduate of the Italian Joint Forces Higher Command and Staff College. I bring this experience with a lifelong interest in military history to my battlefield tours, offering clients a coherent strategic, operational and tactical perspective. I work hard to ensure that the memory of those who fought is properly honoured and respected.

I am a fluent Italian speaker and can get by at colloquial level in German which helps considerably with tour management.

I am accredited with the International Guild of Battlefield Guides and work as a freelance guide for a number of companies, including Staffride, Albatross Tours, Galloway Travel and Battle Honours. This means that I work with adult groups, schools and military units. I also work privately for individuals, families and groups to deliver bespoke tours in Italy, France, Belgium and Berlin.

My interest in military aviation and military history started many years ago and, by the age of 12, I knew that I was going to join the RAF; this dream was realised in 1981. My RAF experience included 17 years on the Boeing Sentry AWACS, with operational flying in the Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq conflicts.

I left the RAF in 2009 to become a full-time Battlefield Guide. I completed the International Guild of Battlefield Guides validation programme in November 2011 and hold Badge No 52.

I visit Second World War battlefields, with a particular interest in Normandy, including the D-Day beaches, the airborne operations, and the frequently neglected fighting inland, which led to the crossing of the Seine in late August 1944. I also visit the campaigns across Northwest Europe to the 1945 battles on and across the Rhine. I have also led tours to Salerno, Cassino and Crete.

Having spent so long in the air environment, I have a huge interest in the air war and I have led tours to sites related to the Great War in the air, Fighter Command, the Combined Bomber Offensive and the German secret weapons programmes.

An interest in the Air War naturally leads to the subject of National Socialist Germany. I have taken groups to many sites in Hitler’s Germany, from 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.

And Germany, of course, leads to an interest in Berlin. I never served in Berlin – but I am an old Cold Warrior!

For most of my adult life, I have been a traveller and my favourite locations are those where major historical events have taken place. I have travelled widely in India and this led to a deep interest in the history of Great Britain’s involvement in that country. I have led groups looking at the story of the Indian Corps on the Western Front.

I come from a family that saw service in both the World Wars. My mother’s father was in France during the First World War and her two brothers fought in the Second War – one in the Royal Air Force, successfully evading capture at Dunkirk in 1940, and another with the Royal Navy in the Atlantic. On my father’s side of the family, my grandfather saw service in the Royal Army Medical Corps in the First War and later became an Air Raid Warden in Burton on Trent in World War II, whilst his brother was with the Royal Air Force in the Far East.

Talking to them sparked my own interest in military history which then developed to reading about battles and military campaigns – it was the part of the history lessons at school I liked most! When I had some pocket money I would buy books about battles and would always be scouring ‘junk shops’ for military cap badges, medals and the like.

Medal collecting led to me undertaking research into the lives of the individuals that had won them and in turn to research the battles in which they had fought. The next logical step was visiting some of those battlefields. Initially alone but later with friends and family, the visits developed into small guided tours with an emphasis on the human side of war and its effect on the people involved, not just the combatants but those back home or in the countries where the campaigns and battles were fought.

As well as general tours of the Western Front battlefields I also have a particular interest and knowledge in the involvement of the Canadian and Australian forces in both World Wars and have led a number of tours to the European battlefields where they fought as well as in the UK where they trained.

I also particularly enjoy taking small groups on family pilgrimages and undertaking the research that is involved in developing these tours. In particular, I have led a number of American groups and families to the Normandy battlefields of World War II. This led to the development of tours around particular American units including the 29th Division in the drive from the Normandy beachhead to St Lo and the Division’s battle to capture Brest in Brittany. In the UK I have also researched and developed tours around the US forces in the West Country in the run up to D Day including the Slapton Sands disaster and the development of the Woolacombe Infantry Training Centre in Devon.

I have significant experience of working with school groups and  was recently part of the guide team that delivered the Government initiative to take two students and a teacher from every English state school to the battlefields of France and Belgium between 2014 and 2019. I am currently a volunteer speaker for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and also help to clean and maintain CWGC headstones in local churchyards.

“Once again you’ve made our battlefields trip and amazing experience. Thank you for all the extra special investigations you do. We can’t imagine these trips without you!”
Teacher – School group

“Our trip has been the trip of a lifetime experience – your part made it absolutely awesome!”
Guest – Canadian Adult group

Tim has guided tours to battlefields and Remembrance sites since 2008, leading schools parties, groups of veterans, serving military and the general public.

Before this he served in the Royal Navy for 35 years as a Gunnery and Air Defence Officer. This included service at sea in the Falklands and in the First Gulf War, as well as deployments afloat to many other parts of the world, and shore postings working with colleagues from the British Army, Royal Air Force and other nations. During his naval career, his life-long interest in naval history led him to take part in several battlefield studies, initially as the maritime expert, and subsequently broadening his interests to encompass land and air campaigns of the 20th Century.

Whilst preferring to look at battlefields with a nautical or amphibious flavour, such as Gallipoli, Dunkirk or Normandy, he is equally at home guiding on the Somme, in Flanders or other land-locked regions.

He is a Westcountryman by birth, with, perhaps not surprisingly, something of a maritime interest from an early age. After many years in Portsmouth, enjoying living near a major focus of the nation’s naval heritage, he has recently returned to his Devonshire roots. He joined the Guild in 2008, was awarded his Badge in 2014 and became the Guild’s Validation Secretary in 2015, a role he relinquished in 2020 when he joined the Management Board and was appointed as Guild Secretary.

Vivien gained her B.A. in English Literature at Bedford College London, and trained to become a teacher. She taught for thirty-eight years in a variety of secondary schools and colleges, heading up departments of English and of Media Studies.

It was through teaching the literature of the Great War and taking her sixth-form students to the battlefields of the Western Front that Vivien became fascinated by the history. After retiring from teaching in 2006, she undertook the M.A. course in War Studies at Kings College London. She also began a new career as a writer. She has published a two-volume literary biography of the First World War poet and novelist Richard Aldington. She lectures on the literature of the First World War and is a regular contributor of articles to journals. Vivien joined the Guild of Battlefield Guides in 2011 and became an accredited guide in February 2014. She has conducted, under the auspices of the tour company ‘Battle Honours’, a series of literary battlefield tours, aiming to explore the nature of the various conflicts on the Western Front in which the combatant poets took part and the roles they played, and to use this context to explore their writing. In November 2018, the hundredth anniversary of the death of Wilfred Owen, she conducted a tour of the battlefield sites where he served. She also guided a series of literary tours for secondary school students under the government’s First World War Centenary Schools Programme and finds it particularly rewarding to introduce young people to the battlefields of the First World War. She currently works for Anglia Tours.

Vivien’s knowledge of the literature of the war is extensive and she is happy to lead literary tours of the Western Front for both student and adult groups. But she also has a thorough grasp of the military history of the war and an awareness of how understanding is enhanced by visiting and walking the battlefields.

David has been guiding the battlefields since 1997, with his main interests in WW1 & WW2.

His enthusiasm for military history originated from several sources, not least his 20 years in the British Army, predominantly with the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, serving in many parts of the world. Also, his father was a Battle of Britain pilot, while his mother was one of the decoders on the Enigma machine at Bletchley Park. Hence his desire to become passionately involved in military history, and especially the personal stories of those who partook.

Though he works as an independent guide, he is presently guiding for four companies, including one in America and another in Canada, taking schools, universities, adult and military groups (including Staff Rides), and offering private bespoke tours. All tours always include any research to meet client requirements.

As one company recently requested, when they contacted David. ‘Can you do a Normandy tour in one day? The reply being, ‘but it takes at least 4 hours just to drive there’ (from England). The company’s response being; ‘no, it’s only 45 minutes by private aircraft’. What a tremendous tour!

Allan served for 22 years in the Regular Army in the 17^th/21^st Lancers and Queens Royal Lancers, a career which ended at the Armoured Fighting Vehicle Gunnery School, Lulworth.  Allan was later commissioned into the TA serving for a further 9 years firstly with the Dorset and later the Royal Wessex Yeomanry in Bovington where he began guiding battlefield tours.

Allan’s first battlefield tour as a guide was for the Yeomanry to Normandy in 1999.  He has since guided nearly 200 battlefield tours for both Regular and Territorial Army units, schools and numerous adult groups to the Western Front, North West Europe plus other campaigns outside of the two World Wars including Waterloo and Agincourt.  Allan has guided many ANZAC focused tours of the Western Front, 1916-1918.  Allan retired from teaching to give himself the time to be an active Battlefield Guide and works freelance for several companies and organisations.  Allan also regularly gives talks on Military History to a wide variety of audiences from those including very senior serving officers to local groups in the Dorset area and wider afield.

Allan is an Accredited Member of (Badge Number 66) of the International Guild of Battlefield Guides and a current Validator for candidates on the Path to their own Badge.  He is a member of the Western Front Association, Royal Lancers Regimental Association and a Trustee for the Dorset Yeomanry Association.

Allan is an Alumnus of the Duke of York’s Royal Military School, Dover.  Whilst in the Army he studied and graduated through the Open University, later training as teacher at the University of Bath after which he taught History in a secondary school in Poole.  Allan was later appointed as the Headteacher of the Compass, the school responsible for providing Alternative Provision for young people in Weymouth, Dorset. Allan still lives in Weymouth with his wife Angela, who tolerates both his guiding and golf in exchange for holidays in the sun!  They have two grown up children.