D-Day To The Rhine - The Beginning

Welcome to our blog site. We hope you find the site interesting and we welcome your comments as we go along. The tour we are taking is the Stephen Ambrose Historical Tours' "D-Day To the Rhine". Albert Sponheimer, WWII veteran, who was in the first wave of the D-Day invasion at Omaha Beach will be traveling with us.  Over 10 days we will be following the D-Day Landings at Normandy (Operation Overlord), the race to capture the bridges over the Rhine (Operation Market Garden), and the Battle of The Bulge. The tour starts the evening of 2 June (Day 2) in London, however we are going a few days early to recalibrate our biorhythms to European time and see London.  We will fly home on 13 June from Frankfurt, Germany. Here's our itinerary:

Day 3 London

The morning city tour will focus on WWII London, with stops at St. Paul’s Cathedral, the Churchill War Rooms, and the Imperial War Museum. At St. Paul's Cathedral we will see the book which lists every airman killed while stationed in England. Then we proceed to the Churchill War Rooms, part of the underground nerve center of Britain's war effort. The war rooms became necessary after aerial bombardments in WWI; the government needed a secure headquarters where they could conduct business in the event that that London was bombed. In the afternoon we will visit the Imperial War Museum, which houses authentic examples of World War II weaponry and an exhibit of World War I trench warfare.

Day 4 Portsmouth

We travel to Portsmouth, where we'll visit the award winning D-Day Museum and Overlord Embroidery. Portsmouth’s D-Day Museum is Britain’s only museum with the primary goal of covering all aspects of the D-Day landings in Normandy on June 6, 1944. The centerpiece of the museum is the Overlord Embroidery, the world’s longest embroidery of its kind, which measures 272 feet long. After lunch, the group will visit the Southwick House, the elegant country house which became the location of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force. In the months leading up to D-Day, Southwick House became the headquarters of the main Allied commanders. Large wall maps that were used in planning D-Day are still in place in the house, with markers showing the positions of the involved forces at the moments of the first landings.

Day 5 Caen

In the morning we board the cross-channel ferry. Once we arrive in Normandy, we will drive out to Omaha Beach where the Americans took the German fortifications after a stupendous fight. Omaha Beach is six miles wide, surrounded by cliffs. This made the beach landing extremely hazardous. Very little went as planned during the landing at Omaha Beach. German defenses were strong, and inflicted heavy casualties on landing US troops. We will study the battlefield and hear accounts of the heat of battle; cross the beach, analyze the maps and imagine the courage that saved our freedom that day. Today the American Cemetery stretches along the bluff overlooking Omaha Beach. It covers 172 acres, and contains the remains of American military dead, most of whom were killed during the invasion of Normandy and ensuing military operations in World War II. The names of the Americans who lost their lives in the conflict but could not be located and/or identified are inscribed on the walls of a semicircular garden at the east side of the memorial. Our last stop of the day is at Point-du-Hoc, a sheer cliff over 100 ft. high where the elite Ranger Force scaled the German breastworks on D-Day.

Day 6 Caen (6 June D-Day)

In the morning, we’ll visit Ste-Mere-Eglise, taken by the American Airborne on D-Day, and hear the stories of the veterans who took it. We follow the route of 101^st Airborne, 506^th Parachute Infantry Regiment; the route Lt. Richard Winters (Band of Brothers) and a handful of men took on the first night of the invasion of Brecourt Manor. In 1944, the manor was the site of a German battery that threatened the invasion beaches at Utah. We will have the unique opportunity to visit the site of the battery and follow the exact route of the assault by Easy Company. From the manor we proceed to Utah Beach and the Utah Beach Museum. The museum was built around the German strategic bunker WN5, in the exact place where American Troops set foot on French soil on D-Day.From Ste-Marie-du-Mont, we will travel past Dead Man’s Corner, and into Carentan, the Norman town that was one of the Allies earliest objectives. We will see the site of Easy’s battle as they entered the town on June 12.

Day 7 Caen

We travel to Pegasus Bridge, where the first shots of D-Day were fired. A glider borne company of the British 6th Airborne Division, and an early success in the invasion captured this bridge over the Caen Canal, called Pegasus Bridge in honor of the symbol of the British airborne force. We will study the British and Canadian Beaches, Sword, Juno and Gold, as our historian brings us back to June 6, 1944. Sitting on the cliff top overlooking Arromanches, we will visit Cinema Circulaire 360 and view “The Price of Freedom.” The 360 degree film utilizes archived film, previously unseen footage, and footage of the towns and countryside where so many battles were fought. We will end our day at Longues-sur-Mer, the battery of guns against which HMS Ajax scored perhaps the most accurate (and maybe the luckiest) hit of the war. We'll see the evidence that remains.

Day 8 Paris
On the way to Paris we’ll view the Bridge at Troarn, the D-Day objective of the 3rd Parachute Squadron, Royal Engineers.  We arrive in Paris in the afternoon and spend the rest of the day exploring the city.

Day 9 Arnhem

We board a high-speed train to Brussels and begin our study of Operation Market Garden. This was the earliest and only attempt by the Allied forces to strike directly for Berlin. Control of the bridges at Eindhoven, Nijmegen and Arnhem would enable British armored forces to reach the far side of the Rhine and then have an open road to Berlin. Our travels continue along Hell’s Highway, the route followed by the British XXX Corps as it attempted to reach its embattled 1st Airborne Division in Arnhem. Our first stop will be at the famous bridge over the Rhine that was the objective of Operation Market Garden, the Bridge at Nijmegen. Following this we go on to the bridge “Too Far” at Arnhem where we discuss the desperate three days that the British 1st Airborne held firm. We then visit the Airborne Museum at Oosterbeek, which focuses on the Battle of Arnhem, and the British Cemetery near there.

Day 10 The Ardennes

From Arnhem we will drive through the Ardennes to the Siegfried Line to see the remnants of German communication trenches, the pillboxes and dragon’s teeth, gun pits and foxholes that American GI’s fought so hard to take in late 1944. The Ardennes is where Hitler put everything he had into his only counterattack. On December 17, 1944, the second day of their offensive, the Germans had several breakthroughs and many Americans surrendered near the town of Malmedy. Outside the town, the leading SS Panzer Division lined up about 150 GIs and fired at them point blank. Less than half escaped alive. We will see the site of the massacre and the American Memorial at Malmedy. In the forested hills of eastern Belgium we visit a hamlet called Baraque de Fraiture at the intersection of two highways. Here in a grassy plot lies a carved granite boulder that proclaims it “Parker’s Crossroads” for the commander and his men who held out for two days against a massive German onslaught.

Day 11 Luxembourg

We will drive to Bastogne where the Americans rallied and stopped the German attack. Here is the route of the initial American retreat and the place where the 101st Airborne and elements of the 10th Armored held off fifteen German divisions for eight days. Our historian will take us through the sites in the picturesque town. We’ll also see the Memorial to the troops and the Battle of the Bulge Museum nearby.

Day 12 Frankfurt

Our morning will begin by paying tribute to the many fallen at the German Cemetery, American Cemetery in Hamm and General George S. Patton’s grave. Gen. Patton rests among his men in a cemetery as beautiful and moving in its own way as the one at Normandy. We then will venture on an afternoon lunch cruise along the Rhine River, with its spectacular scenery and landscapes. Finally, we travel to Frankfurt.