Introduction Amazingly, this the 100th Blog post I have written and I would like to thank everyone who has come along on my journey and will use this milestone to reflect on the stories. This post highlights some of the family stories and other tour milestones. The map shows many of the post locations, the red markers are family stories and the blue markers are battlefield sites. Click on the interactive map to get an overview of the story and links to any posts you may have

Introduction During my recent visit to Normandy, I traced the path of my Uncle Les Allen, a Corporal in the Mortar Platoon of the Royal Regiment of Canada. They landed on Juno Beach a month after D-Day and fought their way south in several operations leading up to Operation Tractable 8-10 Aug 1944. Personal History Leslie Orllian Allen was born on 07 December 1922 in Kingsville, ON, to Orillian Allen and Mary Alice Rawson, the sixth of eleven children. The last two children w

My good friend Sandy Cyr’s grandfather Jan (John) Scholte served in the Dutch Princess Irene Brigade in WW2. The Irenes briefly served under the Second Canadian Corps so I took a look at their actions. Sandy was able to get John’s service records from the Dutch Army and Google Translate helped trace his story. During a recent long weekend, Rachel and I visited a number of museums in the Netherlands and took the opportunity to visit a few memorials to the Princess Irene Brigad

In addition to our battlefield and tiny country tours, we took the opportunity to explore the ancient cities of Rimini, Ravenna and Bologna during our visit to Italy. All of the cities have impressive structures that are thousands of years old. Rimini Rimini has been inhabited from ancient times but was created as a Roman city in 268 BC when 6,000 Romans were sent to Rimini to establish a base at the mouth of the Marecchia River to expand into the Po Valley. The beaches of

During our recent visit to Italy, my daughter Rachel and I negotiated a travel package, two days of battlefield tours in exchange for the tiny country of San Marino. Rachel has made it her mission to visit all of the countries of Europe that participate in The Games of the Small States of Europe during her four-year teaching assignment at the NATO school in the Netherlands. She has done very well so far with 9 of 10 visited to date. She is only missing the smallest, Vatican C

Introduction This Easter, Rachel and I visited Italy, spending the week in the beach town of Rimini. Throughout our travels we have reached an exchange rate of competing interests, this trip we negotiated two days of battlefield touring in exchange for one tiny country. Rachel is on a quest to visit all the tiny countries of Europe, so most of our tours involve at least one tiny country. This trip included a visit to San Marino, a teeny mountain top town that is completely em

Clan Sullivan: Carol, Pat, Terry, Michael and Brian. Introduction We recently conducted a WWI Tour with my good buddy Terry Sullivan and his wife Sandy Cyr. We were joined by four of eight of Terry’s siblings: Michael, Brian, Carol and Pat along with Carol’s Husband Rod. We focused on the Royal Newfoundland Regiment and as part of the Caribou monument visit, we visited the significant locations for the Sullivan grandfather Corporal William Sullivan and Private Wallace Pike, g

Introduction We recently conducted a WWI Tour with my good buddy Terry Sullivan and his wife Sandy Cyr. We were joined by four of eight...

Introduction This fall we are going on a Caribou Trail tour to visit all of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment Memorials in France and...

One of this spring’s tours was to follow the Canadians as they fought their way north from Normandy to clear the channel ports to reduce...

As part of my tour tracing the paths of Uncles Norm Kightley 8th Hussars and George Johnston, Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders of Canada...

8th Hussars and the Argylls Rachel’s buddies Janaya and Beth were visiting for the weekend, so I took the opportunity to follow my Uncle...

Norm Kightley was my uncle on my mother’s side of the family. He and his wife Marj were frequent visitors to our family, and I knew him...

My next stop on the D-Day tour was Gold Beach, the British Beach in the centre of the D-Day landings. Gold Beach had 4 sectors, but due...

As I continued on my Normandy Tour, I took a one-day Canadian Beaches and inland tour. I had been to Juno beach before but felt since the...

Back Story During a recent visit to Normandy, I visited a number of locations associated with Flight Lieutenant Robert McKenzie, a...

The exploration of the Battle of the Scheldt continued, looking at the Action on the Northern Bank. Fortunately, I did not have to sleep...

Thanks to a teacher girls’ weekend in Milan, Rachel’s car and I got to spend some time exploring the Battle of the Scheldt, a major...

On our last day of touring, we worked our way back south of Arras before heading back home to Maastricht. Monchy-le-Preux Our first stop...

After a good day on the Somme, we headed up to Arras for Part Deux of the Rachel Battlefield Tour. Rob Wolsey, a Canadian Battlefield...