O<$>NE of the most thought-provoking days of the year occurs tomorrow . . . the occasion on which veterans of war are honoured for sacrifices that preserved our liberties and freedom.But it’s sad that reflection is limited to only one annual Day of Remembrance. The debt is so great it deserves far more attention.

Those of us who travel have so many opportunity to visit sites where strategic battles changed the course of history. And many are too quick to forget those around them who played major roles in such decisive events.

Bermudians, surrounded as they are by such a treasury of historic forts, are more conscious of such history than most.

The possibilities are diverse and very worthy. So many Bermudians visit the British Isles and those interested soon learn it would take a lifetime to cover all the war museums, battlegrounds and memorials.

This traveller has been at it for years and still only scratched the surface. Why interrupt your vacation experience that way? Isn’t travel supposed to broaden the mind as well as relax and re-energise the body?

For example, anyone who comes to Bermuda and misses the Royal Naval Dockyard and its museum is bypassing what this traveller considers one of the island’s prime attractions.

The same is true of visiting London’s Imperial War Museum, Dorset’s Bovington Tank Museum and the Royal Signal Corps Museum. It’s all part of a history that played a role in forming the world we know today.

Whether it’s Culloden Battlefield in Scotland’s Highlands, France’s Maginot Line bunker museums or the massive gun emplacements of Gibraltar, they’ve all left an unforgettable impression on my memory and hopefully broadened my knowledge of history.

We were brought up to believe you don’t stop learning until you’re lowered into the ground. Yet stunningly, a recent study showed American college students from such major universities as Berkeley, Stanford and Yale, among others, had an abominable lack of knowledge when it came to history of any kind.

Why not start with a visit to Dockyard’s Maritime Museum if you’ve never been there, also walk through the cemetery en route there and read some of the interesting inscriptions on early naval monuments.

Forever etched in memory are visits to military cemeteries across Europe . . . the devastating casualties at Somme, Ypres and Verdun . . . driving across breathtaking Alpine passes en route to Cortina d’Ampezzie in Italy and encountering mountain-top cemeteries from both World Wars . . . the vast cemetery with General Patton’s grave in Luxembourg, where we traced, located and photographed the grave of a hometown soldier whose few remains were buried there after he was blown up crossing the Rhine. His grieving parents had never been able to visit his grave site.When I first visited Duxford, the famed British airbase from which so many bombing runs were made, it was deserted but intact. That was in the early 1970s. It has since become an air museum, very worthy of visitor attention.So is the military cemetery and war memorial near Cambridge honouring those who never returned from those night-time bombing runs.

The Lancaster bomber on display at Hendon’s Royal Air Force museum, with the number of its raids marked on the site, was certainly thought- provoking.

I can’t remember ever bypassing any such site, whether it be Corfe Castle in Dorset where Cromwell’s forces crushed opponents, or Le Linge atop France’s Vosges Mountains where trenches are still in place from World War One and soldiers’ bodies continue to be discovered. Luckily, all my relatives who fought in those wars returned, although injuries suffered in America’s Civil War led to the early death of my great grandfather, and gas warfare at Verdun during World War One left an older uncle’s lung’s seriously impaired.

If my mother’s youngest brother, Jim, hadn’t listened to the little voice that told him to get off the ship in Okinawa, he wouldn’t have lived to become one of my favourite uncles. A supply staff sergeant, he was scheduled to go ashore in the morning after invading troops landed and took the beach. But something told him to take his chances and go with them, rather than waiting. At dawn a kamikaze suicide plane dived into the ship, sinking it almost immediately with all hands on board lost.

If you have a living relative who served, what a wonderful opportunity to ask them about their experiences first hand. It’s an up-close-and-personal history lesson far more intriguing than anything you see in the movies!

It not, research can reveal some quite remarkable background. For example, my older relatives spoke about ancestor General Israel Putman’s role as early head of the Continental Army under George Washington, but nothing else about him.

Imagine my surprise digging deeper when I recently learned he’d been captured during the Seven Years War, was tied to a stake and about to be burned by Indians in 1758 when rescued by a French officer.

Apparently a great survivor, he was shipwrecked on a British Naval vessel in a mission off Cuba and one of only few survivors. Records often reveal quite amazing information.

Bermudians have grown up surrounded by such an amazing collection of forts, they should have special interest in visiting others around the world.

Whether it’s San Juan, Havana, St. Kitts’ Brimstone Hill or Cartagena, Colombia’s massive fortress, all are storehouses of history. We’ve lost count of the number of Vauban fortresses visited everywhere from remote corners of France to Capetown, South Africa.

All are truly awesome, but none more so than Cap Haitien’s Citadel built by Henri Christophe in his struggle for Haiti’s independence from France.

Although some of these wonders are very easily accessible, others like the Citadel present more of a challenge. We reached it via a steep mule ride up a narrow trail more than 20 years ago before turmoil made visiting there too dangerous.

The list of sites to visit is only limited by your time. But once you start, you’ll soon become intrigued. Churchill’s “bunker” under London’s Admiralty is a good place for England-bound visitors to start. Maps, graphs, charts . . . all remain exactly as used during World War Two.

Dover Castle, with its underground headquarters where the D-Day invasion was planned, is definitely worth a major detour. Whether you’re touring the Normandy beaches or Virginia’s deadly Antietam battlefield, the casualty and injury list of those who fought there should never be forgotten.

From the Civil War’s Gettysburg and Vicksburg to Quebec’s Plains of Abraham where both Montcalm and Wolfe fell, memory of what happened there comes alive on a visit.

There’s an entire world full of sites where brave soldiers changed the course of history. Some are exceptionally fabled, but so difficult of access few reach them.

Two on my list, not likely to be seen any time soon, are Sudan’s Khartoum where Chinese Gordon met his death, and Roark’s Rift, site of the Zulu and British battle which has lured me into watching and re-watching Michael Caine in Zulu<$> every time it reappears on television.

Whether you’re driving past mountain-pass World War One bunkers along the Italian-Austrian border or suddenly come upon a World War Two cemetery where soldiers fought through Alsace’s Colmar Pocket, put on the brakes and stop.

Certainly all those along France’s heavily fortified Maginot Line deserve a detour. Even those that aren’t now museums are worth pulling off the route to view. There’s something so haunting, still ominous about them.

Being introduced to the Confederate Air Force for a series of articles launched an interest in warplanes. After flying in a B-17, B-24 Liberator Bomber, P-38 and Lockheed Hudson, I now find it impossible to bypass any air museum.

If you’re interested in a similar experience, there are a few places where flights on B-17s and B-24s are available on a sort of rotating basis around the US at something like $400 per person for a short run.

A friend of mine gave his bombardier father a ride on one for his birthday to remember what it was like when he flew one during World War Two.

Around the July 4 weekend, the very distinctive sound of those bombers draws us out of the house into the yard to watch as it follows a route from an area airport out over Lake Michigan and back.

It’s always a nostalgic experience. What must it have been like to have a whole force of them flying over, bombs ready!

Tucson, Arizona’s Pima Air Museum, with its incredible warplane collection, is a great place to view them and meet some of the people who actually flew them in combat.

There are literally thousands more such worthy sites.

[obox] Next week: Latest in luxury travel trends.

Reflections on Remembrance Day