Tag Archives: Calvados

Normandy June 2014 – Day#05 Tuesday 3rd June

At La Fiere A reasonably early start saw us arriving at the Sullivan family accommodation at La Fiere which is on the banks of the river Merderet which is a key battle in the history of the 82nd Airborne Division Elizabeth, Bill’s wife had found some old wartime photos of Bill that she brought out […]

Normandy 2013 – Day#5 Wednesday 5th June

Operation EPSOM & Hill 112 Operation EPSOM revisited So, waking up to a dull & overcast morning (as 5th June was, last year), we set off to follow one of the Tours in the BattleZone Normandy book on Operation EPSOM written by Lloyd Clark. Operation EPSOM was the Allies third attempt to take the D […]

Men in the Shed at Manchester Military History Society

Each month the Manchester Military History Society has a speaker on a military related subject followed by a discussion around that subject or related topics. On Tuesday 9th April (if you can make it!), I’ll be delivering the lecture for the Society focusing on “the story so far…” In 2004, Colin Foster began an investigation […]

Day 7: 6th June

Swapping history Before we could set off from Bayeux to meet Bill & Elizabeth Sullivan, we’d arranged to meet up with Stéphane Jacquet who is the curator of the museum at Tilly sur Seulles, just South of Bayeux. Stéphane and I had made contact through a Facebook group interested in the 6th Guards Tank Brigade […]

Day 6: 5th June

This was quite a busy day, covering Operation EPSOM, the “Scottish Corridor” and Hill 112 and then on the trail of Ray Elledge and Francis Gillespie with some “Calvados hunting” in between. Operation EPSOM, the “Scottish Corridor” and Hill 112 Last year, we had visited the “shoulder” of the Operation EPSOM battlefield when we took a look around Rauray & […]

Normandy June 2012 trip summary

I actually started this in the Eurotunnel terminus waiting for our train (must be a song in there, somewhere), as the plan was, rather than in previous years when I’ve waited until after the trip to do any updates, this time to try to do daily updates. However, as any military historian will tell you: No plan […]