Created and led by historian Yannis Kadari (Cadet CEO), Vanguard is an international group of historians and authors who are passionate about WWII history.
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The 333rd Field Artillery Battalion was a racially segregated unit composed of African-American troops. A day into the German offensive in the Ardennes, the unit fought back at Schoenberg near St. Vith and remained at the guns even when the Germans broke into their lines. 2/4 
The men were taken to a field by a crossroads and gunned down, but there were survivors. Peiper survived the war and was put on trial at Dachau with the main accusation concerning the Malmedy Massacre. 2/8 
Miller voluntarily enlisted in the fall of 1942 and was commissioned as a captain in the Army Specialist Corps before being transferred to the AAF Technical Training Command (TTC) where he formed a band. In May 44, Eisenhower requested the transfer of Miller's AAF band to Great Britain and was introduced to another star in London, the actor Lt. Col. David Niven who was deputy director of SHAEF Broadcasting. (Niven is seen here in the 1942 film 'First of the Few' with Leslie Howard who would die on 1 June 1943 when the plane he was flying in was shot down over the Bay of Biscay). 2/6
Bloch was born in Lyon on 6 July 1886 into a Jewish-Alsatian family and was working as a high school teacher in Amiens when the Great War broke out. Having already done his two years obligatory military service, he was mobilised as a sergeant into the 272nd Infantry Regiment and saw action during the bloody Battle of the Frontier and on the Marne, then later the Somme and other battles right up to the end of the war. 2/6
Edelweißpiraten were counter-culture groups of youths who were against the forced indoctrination of the Nazi party and its youth organisations (BDM and HJ) for whom they bore a particular hatred, occasionally ambushing groups of the latter and handing out a beating. 2/6 
The American paratroopers were from the 82nd Airborne who had been misdropped and they landed in the flooded marshlands around Graignes. Many would lose their lives drowning in the marshes before they had a chance to fight. The first paratrooper she saw was one who knocked on the farmhouse door. The family let him in and helped him dry off in front of the fire. 2/5
With the Allies only six miles away, local maquis groups harassed retreating German units. On the morning of the 27th, a Wehrmacht unit enters the village and the mayor, Charles Nardin, was ordered to gather all the menfolk under the pretext that they were to dig anti-tank ditches. 2/4
Audrey Kathleen Ruston was born in Brussels in 1929 to Baroness Ellea van Heemstra and British father Joseph Ruston (he later added Hepburn to his name as he wrongly thought he was a descendent of James Hepburn, 3rd husband of Mary Queen of Scots. 2/12 
After the fall of France, the border area became filled with refugees from as far away as Holland, trying to escape into neutral Spain. One Dutch family, unsuccessful in making the crossing, was that of Fernand De Greef, his wife Elvire and their two children Frederick and Janine, who settled in the Pyreneen town of Anglet, near the border. 2/5
Born in 1895 in the village Auffargis in the Chevreuse valley south west of Paris, his father was a gamekeeper for the Rothschild family who owned the nearby Vaux-de-Cernay Abbey. When war came in 1914, he was serving in the 131st infantry regiment based in Orléans, but he soon transferred to the nascent air arm and qualified as a pilot in 1915. 2/9
Elisabeth was born on 5 February 1915 in Bordes in the Loiret department and was one of five siblings (she is seen here on the right). She studied in Orléans and when war came in 1939 was in St. Omer in northern France where she worked as a school teacher. 2/7 
In the spring of 1941, Andrée decided that more could be done to help Allied soldiers escape from Belgium and with help from her Great War veteran father Frédéric and Arnold Deppé, she set about creating an escape line. 2/6 
The Maquis Noirs were 'fake' resistance fighters, often former or actual criminals, using their weapons to steal, plunder and murder. Their were several groups such as these, taking advantage of the chaos of the summer of 44. In the Loches sector, the "Maquis Lecoz" was led by a certain Capitaine Lecoz (centre) 2/8
Auguste was born in the small town of Chagny (Saône-et-Loire - 71150) in 1906. He later qualified as an agricultural engineer before going on to do his military service. Captured in the Battle of France in 1940, he returned home to his wife Alphonsine and their three children. He soon began his Resistance activities and in 1944 he led the Chagny Resistance group and coordinated sabotage and arms drops as part of the SOE Porthus Buckmaster circuit. 2/4
🇫🇷 Géo André was a French track and field star whose first Olympics were those of London in 1908 and who, despite being badly wounded in the Great War, went on to shine at the 1920 and 1924 games. He enlisted again in North Africa and was killed in action aged 53 during the fighting for Tunis on 4 May 1943. 2/9
Madeleine was born on 23 August 1924 at Arvillers in the Somme department. Her parents were school teachers and her father had been badly wounded during the Great War. Family holidays are spent in the Haute-Vienne with family friends near a village called Oradour-sur-Glane. 2/ 10 
Born in Bogliasco, Italy 26 October 1905, her Russian composer father Alexander Scriabin, moved around Europe and when her parents divorced, Ariadna continued to lead a bohemian existence in various countries, such as Switzerland and Holland where she is seen here aged three. 2/9
Geneviève was born on 25 October 1920 in Saint-Jean-de-Valériscle (Gard) southern France. Her father, Xavier, was the eldest brother of Charles and they both saw action in the Great War. When a second war came along in 39, she was in Brittany where her father was moblized as a reserve officer. Charles is on the left in the photo and Xavier second from the right. 2/9
Born in the Somme village of Saint-Germain-sur-Bresle (80703) on 11 July 1891, Joseph later went to school in Amiens before going on to finding work as a mechanic and welder in the Minet factory near Paris. It was there, in 1910, that he took a prototype 'Zenith' aircraft for a spin without ever having had a flying lesson and thus became one of those magnificent men in their flying machines, and going on to flying Blériots. 2/8
Born in Dublin in 1919, he flew with No. 85 Squadron during the Battle of Britain, and had to bail out of his Hurricane over the Thames Estuary the day after his 21st birthday. Burned out by the end of the Battle of Britain, as many of the young fighter pilots were, he was put on light duties and by the time of the Normandy landings held the rank of Squadron Leader. 2/4
The following day Bundy decided to head south and cross the border into Spain - he now had a set of civilian clothes and only had a silk map and button evasion compass to find his way, moving by night and sleeping by day. After around two weeks, he had made it as far as the hamlet of Anzec some six miles from Poitiers and he was found filling his water bottle there by a young boy name Serge who, as luck would have it, had a father in the Resistance. 2/8