Shelby County Genealogical Society Meeting

Pilgrimage Through Fire: Walking the Battlefields of WWI & WWII

Presented by Bill Albers

There are places in Europe where the air still feels charged… Where the soil remembers the thunder of artillery… Where silence speaks louder than any monument ever could.

Join Bill Albers for a gripping, immersive lecture that retraces his journey across the battlefields of the Great War and the Second World War. From the shattered ridgelines of Verdun to the storm‑lashed sands of Normandy and US Army Air Corps airfields in England this presentation plunges you into landscapes where history refuses to fade. Witness the scars still etched into the earth. Feel the weight of sacrifice in the cemeteries that stretch beyond the horizon. Stand in the very places where ordinary men faced impossible odds. This is not just a lecture. It is a confrontation with memory, courage, and the echoes of war that still linger in the wind.

Bill Albers was born in Amsterdam, the Netherlands (Holland) where he grew up as a child during a five-year occupation by the Germans during WWII. In 1965, he came to America as an engineering intern. He also spent some time working for Sperry Rand in Montreal, Canada, before returning to the United States and became a U.S. citizen in 1977. He retired in 2008, lives in Sidney, and volunteers at the Champaign Aviation Museum in Urbana

and with the WACO Aviation Museum in Troy.

We hope to see you there!