Welcome to the forum Frank! We have a very good and knowledgeable group of people here and many are in Europe. Look around and feel free to post, we are a friendly bunch. 
Especially to newbies!
I am the resident Marine (active duty for 10+ years, 4 3/4 years of reserve time prior to that) and my grandfather was in the forums creator's unit, the 540th combat engineers. If you have any Marine-type questions, I can handle those as well.
And here is a word of advice, Marion the Moderator (AKA M1) will probably do it for you, but her advice to people is to not post email address on the forum. That seems to be a good way to spammed unmercifully by people looking for addresses on the web. If people want to get in touch with you, they can always just hit the email option associated with your profile.