Ian R Gumm
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Ian R Gumm Member of the GUILD of BATTLEFIELD GUIDES I am a professional battlefield guide and retired British Army Major. As a member of the Guild of Battlefield Guides I endeavour to maintain the high levels of good practice and standard of service commensurate with the Guild\'s ethos. Battlefield tours are my passion, they are what I love to do and I feel extremely privileged to be able to take people to the battlefields of Northwest Europe ”following in the footsteps” of an ancestor, relative or military unit. I have led tours for nearly ten years and visited the battlefields at: Ypres - Waterloo - the D-Day Beaches of Normandy - Passchendaele - the Somme - US Airborne sites of Operation Market Garden and the British Airborne at Arnhem - US Airborne and British Airborne sites of Normandy - Vimy Ridge - Messines Ridge - Agincout - Cambrai ... and many more. I served 26-years in the Territorial Army and was very honoured to have commanded B (Rorke\'s Drift) Company, 2nd Battalion, The Royal Regiment of Wales (RRW). In 1997 I had the great privilege of commanding the RRW Regimental contingent at the Affiliation Parade of The Royal Regiment of Wales with 121 SA Infantry Battalion at Mtubatuba, KwaZulu Natal Province, South Africa. It was whilst in South Africa that my passion for touring battlefields was kindled when I visited the battlefield at Isandlwana and the mission station of Rorke\'s Drift. In 1998 I was posted to The University of Wales Officer Training Corps with whom I served as their Training Major before retiring in 2002. During this period my love of battlefield tours blossomed with the experience gained when taking the Potential Officers of Wales and the Officer Cadets of the UOTC on tour. Apart from my military career I had pursued a successful career in the Printing Industry where I was employed as a Divisional Director by one of the UK\'s large independent Web Offset Magazine Printers. In September 2007 I decided to give up this career to turn my hobby and passion into a full-time business. I now run In the footsteps with my wife Jo. If you would like more details of the service I offer, visit my website at In the footsteps BATTLEFIELD TOURS
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Operation OVERLORD, as the invasion of Northwest Europe is known, was the largest amphibious assault to have ever taken place and involved almost three million Allied troops from twelve participating Allied nations. It took more than two and a half years to plan and prepare and culminated in the capture of Paris 80 days after the Allied forces landed on the coast of France.
It would be easy for you to view this article as an advertisement for what I do, it is not meant to be. It is meant to be an informative article about a little known service available to anyone who wishes to follow in the footsteps of an ancestor, relative or even a particular military unit rather than go on a set battlefield tour. In other words do what they want to do rather than what the set tour package tells them they can.
To help those wishing to research records of British Soldiers who served in the 1914-18 Great War we thought that it would be useful if we put together some notes on the basics of how to research this information.
The true story of the coup-de-main assault by British Gliderborne soldiers to capture the two vital bridges over the Caen Canal and River Orne near Bénouville, France in the early hours of D-Day, 6 June 1944. This was the first action of D-Day the greatest seaborne invasion the world has ever known.
