“his analysis exposes many historical myths about Custer’s last fight.”
Max Hastings
Battlefield Tours
Robert Kershaw has completed and led a substantial number of battlefield tours across three continents – America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. These were completed both in and out of uniform.
He is readily available to speak on a fee paid or arranged basis depending upon research and travel to virtually any battlefield site. Any site is plausible, ancient or modern, depending upon interest and the research required.
Current Tours
Arnhem and Operation Market-Garden – A Bridge too Far
This tour covers the Market-Garden Operation in September 1944, which was an attempt to lay an airborne carpet of parachute and glider landings across the last major remaining waterways barring access to the Germany’s industrialized Ruhr.
The D-Day Landings and Paris
This tour deals with the human story of D-Day on 6 June 1944 and the Paris insurrection and liberation the following August. It explores what it was like to parachute in the night skies over Normandy, land by glider behind enemy lines, climb the cliffs at Pointe du Hoc and wade ashore on the British and American beaches under fire.
Operation Barbarossa
This tour forms part of The Cultural Experience The Invasions of Belarus tour, covering Napoleons invasion in 1812 and Hitler in 1941.
Winter War ‘White Death’ – The Russo-Finnish War 1939-40
This tour is about the battles that occurred along the famous Raate road from the Russian border to Suomussalmi, and follows another Soviet invasion route to Kuhmo further south.
Russia 1941-1943 – The Classic Eastern Front Tour
This is an epic tour, covering the three turning points of the Second World War: Hitler’s failed winter offensive against Moscow in 1941, the defeat and loss of the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad, now Volgograd, in 1942-3 and the climactic clash of armor around the Kursk salient in 1943.
The Victory in Europe Campaign 1944-5
This tour, conducted by Robert Kershaw in the past, begins at London with visits to Churchill’s Cabinet War Rooms, the Imperial War Museum and HMS Belfast.
Operation Mercury: The German Airborne Invasion of Crete 1941
Operation Mercury, the German airborne invasion of Crete is a historic milestone, the only time when a strategic objective was captured using air power alone.
The Waterloo Campaign 1815
The Waterloo tour with Alan Rooney’s Cultural Experience covers the Hundred Days campaign from Napoleon’s invasion of Belgium in June 1815 to his defeat at Waterloo and the retreat to Paris.
Custer and The Indian Wars 1865-90
The Cultural Experience Custer tour explores the conflict between white settlers and Native Americans in the ‘Old West’, conducted beneath ‘Big Sky’ country in Montana and the Black Hills of Dakota.
Tour itinerary
He has experience of and completed battlefield tours at the following locations:
THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR
- The battle of Fredericksburg 1862
- The battle of Chancellorsville 1863
- The battle of Gettysberg 1863
THE AMERICAN INDIAN WARS (Research for ‘Red Sabbath’)
- The Fetterman Massacre 1866
- The battle of the Rosebud River 1876
- The battle of the Little Bighorn 1876
THE ZULU WAR
- The battle of Blood River 1838
- The battle of Isandlwana 1879
- The battle of Rorke’s Drift 1879
THE BOER WAR
- The battle of Majuba Hill 1998
- Colenso and Ladysmith 1899
- The battle of Spioen Kop 1900
WORLD WAR II
- The capture of the Belgian fortress at Eben Emael May 1940.
- The fall of Calais and Dunkirk May-Jun 1940. (Research for ‘Never Surrender’).
- The fall of Crete May 1940.
- Operation ‘Barbarossa’ – the German assault on Russia and Moscow 1941-2. (Research for ‘War Without Garlands’.)
- The battle of Stalingrad 1941-2.
A view of the Russian steppe bordering Stalingrad taken during a recent tour. - The battle of Kursk 1943. (Research for ‘Tank Men’).
- D-Day 6th June 1944 – the parachute landing zones and beaches. (Research for ‘D-Day’).
- The battle of Normandy 1944. (Research for ‘Tank Men’).
- The ‘Market-Garden’ Airborne Corridor and Arnhem. (Research for ‘It Never Snows in September’).
- The Warsaw Uprising 1944.
- The German Ardennes offensive Dec 1944.
- The battle of Berlin 1945.