Tony Colvin

Born in 1939, Tony Colvin moved with his family from Lincoln to Germany in 1946, when his father left 3rd Division and joined the Frontier Inspection Service. Tony visited Winnekendonk in 1947, the first of thirty visits over the years and the source of his fascination with the place. Living in Ratheim on the uncleared battlefields, and visiting destroyed Jülich, Aachen and Krefeld, he was forcibly struck by the anomaly of the contrast between the destructive effects of overwhelming Allied might and the large number of 2 Lincolns' graves at Winnekendonk. This demanded an explanation that no military historian has until now provided. Schooled at Prince Rupert School Wilhelmshaven and Lincoln Grammar School, Tony read PPE at Trinity College, Oxford. He then had a career in marketing with Massey Ferguson. This involved moving to Ontario in 1985, which provided an opportunity to study the Canadian military and to take dual Canadian citizenship. In 1982 he started to research this book, interviewing all the veterans he could find before he emigrated, starting with his father's colleagues. The book was finished in about 1995, but the final chapter took until 2010 to complete, after the writing of an article about Wilhelmshaven for publication in After the Battle Magazine. Tony lives in Topsham, England.