As the televised celebration of the 75^th Anniversary of D-Day unfolded at the cemetery overlooking Omaha Beach in Normandy on June 6^th, 2019, and a few veterans of the conflict now in their mid-90’s were interviewed, Ammonite Managing Partner Skip Hobbs, was so moved that he revisited his parents war letters from June 1944.  Skip decided to share these letters with the Ammonite team, and wrote the following:

As we celebrate the 75th anniversary of D-Day today, I wanted to share with you the D-Day letters of my father to my mom.  My dad was based in London and was one of the officers who ran the Army Air Transport Command in Europe.  Watching the news this morning, I was very thankful for the sacrifices made by the men who landed on the beaches that day; glad that we did not have that experience; but would have been there if so ordered; and sad that our country is so divided now.

One of my fathers “favorite” war stories was the time Lord Astor came to the US Army HQ in April 1944 to invite my dad to go grouse shooting in Scotland in early June. Dad replied “Thanks Bill, but I have larger game to hunt then”. He was busy planning how to transport the troops by air and supply them.  In the 1930’s my father worked in the trust department of the First National City Bank in New York (now Citibank), and had the Astor Family as a client. He and Bill Astor became good friends.

I imagine that many of us had fathers who were in WW II, and perhaps who also participated in D-Day. My dad is long gone. He died in 1991 at age 86.  However, my mom, is still going strong at age 107. As a young mother, she knitted socks and gloves for the troops with the Red Cross. I have the letters that my mother and father wrote each other during the war. They are very interesting reading, and have given me some insight into my parents’ character and lives long before I knew them. 

The response from the Ammonite consultants was truly amazing with accounts from Pearl Harbor to D-Day and beyond, to “my dad was too young to serve, but my grandfather, mother, or uncle did”.

Click here to read the June 1944 correspondence between Major Hobbs in London and Helen Hobbs in Washington. Once you have read these letters, please click here to read the accounts of the relatives of the Ammonite Associates.

John R. Hogg, P. Geo., CPG, FGC

Ammonite Managing Partner Skip Hobbs is pleased to announce that John Hogg has joined Ammonite Resources as a Senior Exploration Adviser. A resident of Calgary, Alberta, John has extensive experience in frontier geoscience and exploration operations in the Canadian Arctic and on and offshore Atlantic Canada and Greenland.

During John’s career he has held various leadership positions in PanCanadian Petroleum, EnCana, Burlington Resources, ConocoPhillips Canada and MGM Energy Corporation. At MGM Energy Corp., from 2007-2014 John was Vice President of Exploration and Operations, and was involved in drilling exploration wells in the Mackenzie Delta and the Central Mackenzie Corridor, looking for both conventional and unconventional resources.

Since becoming a consultant in 2015, Hogg has worked, on Canadian exploration opportunities in the Arctic and Atlantic Canada, and on a number of new venture exploration opportunities in the Eastern Mediterranean, Central Africa, and onshore and offshore Southeast Asia, including Myanmar. John has also provided expert testimony for the Oil and Gas Committee of the Canada Newfoundland Offshore Petroleum Board on discovered resources in the Jeanne d’ Arc Basin; the Canadian National Energy Board on natural gas supply capacity for Atlantic Canada; and for the Government of the Yukon on the potential use of fracture stimulation technologies in the Canadian Arctic.

John obtained his BSc. in Geology from McMaster University in Hamilton Ontario Canada in 1981. He is a Professional Geoscientist (P. Geo.), and is registered in Alberta, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. Hogg also holds a Certified Petroleum Geologist (CPG) designation from the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. He was the President of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Geologists in 2004, and served as the President of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists in 2015-2016.