Solwaster, Belgium, June 7, 2025
The European Center of Military History (EUCMH) is a fully independent project. It has no affiliation with the European Commission, the European Union, or any governmental body in Brussels. EUCMH is neither financed, sponsored, nor supported by any public institution. Its founder and sole creator, Gunter G. Gillot Jr., was born — quite unexpectedly — on May 4, 1955, in Aix-la-Chapelle (Germany), during a unique moment in postwar history. His father, Georges Gillot, served in the Belgian Military Police, part of the Belgian Forces of Occupation in Germany. His mother, Ehlend Ingerbord, was the abandoned daughter of a high-ranking Nazi official who disappeared in 1945 and was later rumored to have resurfaced in Argentina in 1946.
Passionate about war and history from a very young age, Gunter Gillot developed a deep fascination with World War II while growing up in the very region where its battles had raged. Living almost in the heart of the Battle of the Bulge’s former combat zone, he was surrounded by the scars of history — from bunkers and foxholes to the silent stories buried beneath the trees. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, he spent his time visiting countless sites across Belgium where abandoned German and American ammunition dumps still lay hidden in the forests. It was a time when artifacts of war could be picked up directly from the ground — helmets, spent casings, rusted rifles, rations tins, gas mask canisters, and other military gear. While many items were harmless relics, others were dangerously unstable, a haunting reminder of a war that had ended just decades earlier. Entire vehicle wrecks, crates of unused munitions, and field equipment were still scattered across the Ardennes like the battle had paused but never ended. It was during this period that Gunter began building his first collection of WWII militaria — salvaging pieces of history with his own hands, while devouring every book, magazine, and newspaper he could find that documented the war years. His passion was not limited to artifacts; it extended to the stories behind them.
The 1970s also marked a time when thousands of American, British, and German veterans were returning to Europe — many for the first time since the war had ended. Gunter, fluent in both curiosity and sincerity, formed genuine friendships with many of these men. Some were soldiers who had fought in the Ardennes, others had landed in Normandy or survived the Siegfried Line. They became regular visitors, pen pals, and trusted sources of firsthand knowledge. As time passed, those once-young warriors began to fade from the world — but not from Gunter’s memory. He had already begun to record, preserve, and share what they entrusted to him. In 1973, driven by discipline and a passion for military life, Gunter enlisted in the Belgian Army. His goal was clear: as he often says with a smile, “Airborne Forces? That’s five years. Other forces? Two.” Naturally, he signed up for the five. But the system had other plans. During a required examination at the military hospital in Brussels, doctors claimed to have found an issue with his heart — a condition Gunter never accepted and never felt. “I’m 70 now,” he often adds, “and I still practice karate with better balance than most 30-year-olds.”
Ultimately, the army accepted him for two years of service, assigning him to a role as a Heavy Combat Vehicle Mechanic. It may not have been airborne, but it kept him close to the machines, discipline, and the military environment that had shaped his entire youth. Gunter was assigned to the 1st Belgian Brigade, 17-RATPT, stationed at the Édith Clavel Barracks in Düren, Germany. He served there for nearly a year before the entire unit was transferred to Siegen — a place, as he would later say, ‘forgotten by both God and mankind’.
It was there he completed his second year of service, growing increasingly disillusioned with what he describes as “an olive-drab band of occupation idiots” who, by that time, seemed more concerned with posturing than purpose. Eventually, he made the bold decision to walk away — not from discipline or duty, but from a system that had lost its meaning. While in Germany, fate intervened in a more personal way. Gunter met a young German woman named Annegreet Wicke, “a lovely Gretchen,” as he fondly recalls. The two fell in love, married, and Gunter brought her home to Belgium — “a souvenir de guerre,” he would later joke. Annegreet’s father had served on the Eastern Front during the war, been captured by the Soviets, and spent years in a Russian POW camp. A kind and humble man, he returned home in 1949, forever changed but alive — another quiet survivor of a brutal chapter in history.
Gunter’s time in Germany wasn’t just uniforms and tanks — it was also where he experienced a traditional German wedding, full of laughter, chaos, and unexpected customs. In true Bavarian style, neighbors and townspeople gathered from all around, bringing with them plates, cups, and dishes — only to smash them into pieces on the ground. It was the Polterabend, an age-old tradition meant to bring good luck by chasing away evil spirits with the sound of breaking porcelain. The catch? The bride and groom had to clean up every last shard together — a symbolic first act of teamwork in their marriage. “There I was,” Gunter laughs, ‘in my best suit, cleaning up a battlefield of broken china’.
Back in civilian life, Gunter worked here and there, adjusting to the rhythms of post-military life — but his heart never strayed far from history. He continued his personal research with growing intensity, driven by a need to document the war not as it was told in schoolbooks, but as it had really been lived.
About a decade later, that drive gave birth to his first book: ‘Yanks 44’, co-written with a friend and published under a newly created military history publishing house. It was a proud achievement — one that soon led to his second book, ‘US Airborne 1940–1945’, focused on the evolution, tactics, and gear of American paratroopers during WW-II.
But the publishing world had its own battles.
Despite the growing interest in his work, a series of bad partnerships derailed the momentum. Two French distributors failed to do their part. An editor neglected to pay for the success of Yanks 44. And eventually, his publishing house — Foxmaster & Pozit’ — which 
had shown great promise, had to be shut down. The crash came fast, like so many things in postwar memory: built with passion, but undone by others’ carelessness. Despite the setbacks, Gunter and his small publishing team made a lasting contribution to the preservation of military history. They translated and published several key works that would have otherwise remained out of reach for French-speaking audiences.
Among them was “Death of a Division” by British author Charles Whiting, a haunting account of collapse on the battlefield. They brought to print Charles B. MacDonald’s powerful and often-overlooked “The Battle of the Hürtgen Forest”, one of the bloodiest and least understood campaigns on the Western Front. They also worked closely with Allen Langdon, a U.S. WWII paratrooper and historian, to publish his detailed History of the 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment for the 82nd Airborne Division Association in the United States. Another monumental effort was the translation and republication of “Utah Beach,” 
originally produced by the U.S. Government Printing Office, merged and enriched with the work of Michel Clémençon from France. This was followed by the authoritative “Utah Beach to Cherbourg,” an official U.S. Army history now available to new generations thanks to their dedication.
These projects weren’t about profit — they were about passion, preservation, and respect for the men who lived the history others merely read about.
By 1995, Gunter was running a computer retail and repair business when something new arrived: the Internet. Suddenly, the idea of publishing didn’t have to mean paper and ink — it could mean binary code, digital archives, and global access. Inspired by this possibility, he launched the first version of ecmh.com in 1997. But the early days of the web were expensive and unforgiving, and the project had to be put on hold. In 2005, he returned online under a new domain — eucmh.com — after discovering that his original domain had been taken. With new tools and renewed vision, he began building the version of the site that visitors explore today.
Gunter likes to remind readers that EUCMH remains fully independent: there is no external funding, no institutional support — only the occasional donation from a reader who finds meaning in a post, a photo, or a story worth remembering.
In 2006, in a moment of what he now calls “pure insanity,” he moved the site from a U.S. hosting company to one based in Paris. “It wasn’t bad,” he says, “it was terrible.” After another move — this time to Bordeaux, France — the site finally found stable ground. And Gunter? He’s been a happy camper there ever since. And then came what Gunter calls “another stroke of genius — or madness.” At one point, he decided to change the site’s domain from .com to .be, thinking it would better reflect the site’s Belgian roots. What followed was the digital equivalent of rebuilding the entire archive from scratch. After nearly a year of hard work, countless updates, and exhausting effort, the progress was barely 50/50. Gunter finally drew the line. “I had enough,” he says. He returned to eucmh.com, erased the .be version completely, and began the long process of restoring what had once been — a living archive that, before the detour, had reached nearly 900 published documents. To this day, that restoration continues — one archive at a time, one memory at a time.
These days, Gunter goes by the nickname Doc Snafu — a title earned not in the field, but in the chaos of inboxes and unwanted messages. “It became unbearable,” he says, “to constantly be contacted about books I wrote or published. So now, it’s Doc Snafu. Easier for everyone — including me.” On Facebook, where he has nearly 2,000 friends, he estimates he actually knows maybe 15 of them. “It’s mostly a place for fun,” he says — a spot to share some humor, the occasional historical tidbit, or blast a little Led Zeppelin when the mood is right. Twitter (Elon’s X) is more functional: a place to announce newly published posts. The same goes for LinkedIn, though, as he puts it, “I’m not even sure who’s following me there.” Most of the time, when not buried in documents or coding archive entries, Gunter works on EUCMH while watching history documentaries or war footage on YouTube — part research, part habit, part lifelong obsession.
As of 2025, Gunter is still happily married to Annegret, the same “lovely Gretchen” he brought back from Germany decades ago. Together, they’ve raised two daughters, Cindy and Kimberley, a son, Gary, and are proud grandparents to little Nina. Life is good — though Gunter would be the first to admit that a little more financial support for the site wouldn’t hurt. “Then I’d be truly happy,” he says with a smile. Still, day after day — often more than 10 hours a day — he keeps working. Scanning, restoring, tagging, writing, publishing. Not for money. Not for recognition. But because the men who fought and died to liberate Europe in 1944 and 1945 — the Americans, the Russians, the British, and all the others — deserve this. They deserve to be remembered, honored, and understood. And EUCMH will continue doing exactly that, as long as he draws breath.
 |
© 2025 European Center of Military History – EUCMH |
|