Major General John Drewienkiewicz CB CMG
Retired Engineer in Chief and expert in 19th Century continental warfare
Major General John Drewienkiewicz CB CMG, or DZ, as he has been known for about 40 years, is a former Engineer in Chief of the Army who spent over five years in Bosnia and Kosovo between 1996 and 2006 on both armed military and unarmed civilian organisations. He has been studying and walking battlefields since attending Staff College in 1978, returning to teach military history there. His study progressed to the American Civil War, and he served two years as President of the ACW Round Table (UK), as well as leading staff rides in the USA for the British Army. During his service in the Balkans he studied Austria's wars in the mid-19th Century. Periods based in Vienna enabled him to walk and research the battlefields of the 1866 Seven Weeks' War in Bohemia (modern Czech Republic). He has since extended his study both forwards to the Franco-Prussian War and backwards the Wars of Italian Independence and to the Campaigns of Frederick the Great. He has wargamed most of the battles over which he lead tours, and has written five books which examine campaigns through the lens of wargaming, his latest on Königgrätz.