Piers has been guiding groups consisting of veterans, students, relatives and military groups to battlefields and war cemeteries of Europe, The Far East, The Mediterranean and North Africa for the past 35 years. He started his tour operating career with Major & Mrs. Holt’s Battlefield Tours before setting up Remembrance Travel in 1985, for the MoD/RBL, which he continued to run for 25 years. In 2011 he was appointed Chief Executive of The Not Forgotten Association, a tri-service charity for the wounded.
Piers is a qualified guide, badged no. 12, with The Guild of Battlefield Tours, qualifying on The Ypres Salient 1914-1918; The Somme 1916; The Chindit Operations of Burma 1943-44; The Battle of Hillman in Normandy 1944 and The Battle of Arnhem 1944; just some of the World War battles of which Piers is an undoubted expert.
He has taken thousands of relatives to their chosen war cemetery as part of the Government funded War Widows Grant in Aid Scheme, 1985-2010. He wrote the blueprint for the Big Lottery/MoD initiative “Heroes Return”.
Piers comes from a military background, his grandfather serving in the Great War, wounded at The Battle of Loos; and his father, having been captured a number of times in the early part of WW2, was sent to Colditz for four years. Piers himself served in both regular and territorial armies, enabling a personal military perspective to be brought to his tours.
His public speaking topics include “Escaping from Coldtiz”; “Chindit Operations of Burma 1943-44” and “War Cemeteries and Memorials Worldwide”.
Piers is one of the most experienced battlefield and remembrance guides, whose speciality is to personalise his tours to his audience and specific requests for family connections to those who fell.