John Greenacre spent 24 years in the British Army as a commissioned officer in the Royal Corps of Transport and Army Air Corps. A reconnaissance helicopter pilot, John served on operations in the Gulf, the Balkans and Northern Ireland. He is a graduate of the Joint Services Staff College and worked in staff jobs from procurement to arms control, from the Falkland Islands to Canada. He left the Army in 2011. John was awarded his PhD from the University in Leeds in 2009 for the research on his thesis on the development of Britain’s airborne forces during the Second World War. His book on the same subject, Churchill’s Spearhead was published by Pen and Sword in 2010 on the 70th anniversary of the formation of British airborne forces. John is a badged member of the Guild of Battlefield Guides and frequently leads groups across the battlefields of the First World War’s Western Front and Second World War battlefields in France, Holland, Germany, Italy and Malta. He is also an occasional lecturer in modern European history at University Campus Suffolk.