Mike Peters is a retired Army Air Corps Officer who has been leading battlefield tours for more than thirty years. He enlisted in the Army in 1980 at the age of 16 as a Junior Leader and progressed through a busy career to become a Regimental Sergeant Major. He was commissioned from the ranks in the year 2000. Mike finished his military career with postings as Deputy Chief of Staff of the UK Attack Helicopter Force and Ground Liaison Officer in the Headquarters of the RAF Tornado Force. Pre-pandemic, Mike ran his own training company, introducing aspirant guides to the battlefield tour industry, and was a co-Director of Staffride Ltd, specialising in Battlefield Studies for the UK military and NATO headquarters. He is now a UK MOD Civil Servant working in Communications and Heritage for the Royal Anglian Regiment.

Mike has extensive operational experience in Northern Ireland, Macedonia, Bosnia, Kosovo and Iraq where he served during both Gulf wars. His last operational tour was in Afghanistan. This experience and knowledge of tactics gives him a soldier’s eye for ground and the implications of terrain on the weapon systems of your chosen period. He has a passion for military history which he combines with his own military experiences when working as a Battlefield Guide. He strives to place his audience on the field of battle with enough insight to understand the realities of battle, while helping them to imagine what the soldiers of the day saw and felt. This focus allows the listener to look at the battle from the inside out; this is of course every battlefield guide’s aim.

The campaigns of Wellington are Mike’s favourite subject area, although he is equally at home working with groups on the battlefields of the Great War. He is experienced in leading Australian and New Zealand groups over the ANZAC battlefields of the Western Front, Gallipoli and Palestine. Intimate knowledge of modern Air Assault operations also enables Mike to focus on the detail of the parachute and glider operations of World War Two. He regularly leads tours visiting the Landing Zones of Crete, Sicily, Normandy, Arnhem and the Rhine crossing.

Mike enjoys touring with both military and civilian groups and is regularly to be found on the continent leading civilian tours or military Battlefield Studies and Staff Rides. During the FWW Centenary he had a well-received weekly column in the East Anglian Daily Times and regularly contributes articles to military journals and magazines. Mike is a book reviewer for Soldier Magazine (House Magazine of the British Army) and is also a published author – he wrote ‘Glider Pilots at Arnhem’, ‘Glider Pilots in Sicily’ – both are books on the exploits of The Glider Pilot Regiment during World War Two. He has also worked as a TV presenter, featuring in programmes on The Hundred Years War, Dunkirk, Pegasus Bridge, The Glider Pilot Regiment, Operation Market Garden and the US Eighth Air Force daylight bombing campaign. He has just co-authored and published ‘Bomb Group’, the history of the 381st (H) Bomb Group USAAF, and is currently working on the Authorised Operational History of the Army Air Corps 1957-2017.

Mike is an Independent Battlefield Guide; he regularly leads tours for UK based Battle Honours Ltd, US based Experience to Lead, and Mat McLachlan Battlefield Tours in Australia. He was awarded his Guild Badge by the late Professor Richard Holmes in November 2005. He was Vice Chairman of the Guild from 2010-2011, and then Chairman of the Guild from 2011 – 2022.