BattlefieldDiscovery

@BattlefieldBen @WWIImuseum Right? 👍

@BattlefieldDisc @WWIImuseum Wow, this weather front hasn’t been the best. Glad you got the group up… great for them to see it in that way, but can we have some sun and heat please!

Today’s visit to Eagle’s Nest on @WWIImuseum Easy Company Tour found the nest covered in clouds and snow.

@BattlefieldBen @WWIImuseum Today. And given the extra snow they expected later today and tomorrow, it is closing down early today and may not be open for at least tomorrow. We lucked out, so to speak.

@BattlefieldDisc @WWIImuseum Is that recent snow Edwin? The weather has been so cold in the Ardennes this week. 10mins of snow yesterday afternoon.

Former Concentration Camp Dachau Memorial Site. While the entire site is evocative, in my opinion the text on this wall sums it all up. Visited today on a @WWIImuseum Easy Company Tour.

Visiting the Netherlands American Cemetery in Margraten on the @WWIImuseum #easycompany tour yesterday was extra impressive for many guests. Many adoptant families visited the graves they adopted there a few days before on 4 May, Dutch Remembrance Day, and placing flowers. It was a perfect example of the power and beauty of the Grave Adoption Program. This program already started during WW2 and is still widely popular. All just under 8,300 graves and all 1,722 names in the Wall of the Missing are currently adopted. The waiting list for adopting a grave/name is so long that the average waiting time is about 7 years and coordinating foundation cannot accept new applications at current. A wonderful continuing ‘Thank you!’ by the Dutch to their liberators and appreciation of their sacrifice.

And we’re off on another season touring with the @WWIImuseum on their #EasyCompany tours. A great way to not only follow the experience of a group of US paratroopers, famously depicted in HBO series #BandOfBrothers but also to learn about the historical context and wider experience of US and other allied soldiers during #WW2.

Yesterday, we visited this spot on a private tour for the @WWIImuseum . The father of one of the guests was part of the gun crew and we brought the client to the very same spot where his dad helped stop the main attack during the Battle of the Bulge.

@FlandersBTour Lucky for a number of reasons. That includes some lovely friends in Pops. 😊

@BattlefieldDisc You’re lucky, I feel quite envious 😉

Loved Clervaux, super museum here well worth a visit and spending time here if you’re touring the Battle of the Bulge areas:

Hello Clervaux! Just arrived in this beautiful Luxembourgish town to meet up with two clients form the US on a private @WWIImuseum tour, following the footsteps of the father of on of them. The veteran in question was part of an AAA Gun Battalion which helped stopped KG Peiper’s advance during the Battle of the Bulge. The next few days we’ll follow his unit’s trail through NW Europe, Bulge onwards.

The past two days around Arnhem were stellar, guiding a group of nine English gentlemen on behalf of @itfbattlefield. All very highly interested and asking great questions. The story of Arnhem and Market Garden in a broader sense remains to this day a complex one and fraught with myth and misconceptions. But with that also one of the most interesting battlefields to visit.

A splendid tour today of the US 82nd Airborne Division area of operations during Op Market Garden for a lovely couple from Pennsylvania. We covered a lot of ground, looking at several well-known but lesser known actions, explaining the missions and challenges in this sector.

Every now and again, a proper off-the-beaten-path tour. It takes us and guests to places rarely visited by most tours. Today was such a day, so specifically following 1st Battalion, 501st PIR, 101st AbDiv during Market Garden with a client. One such place was Schijndel and the place where B Coy fought on 22 Sept 1944. The scars of battle still clearly visible on the buildings, such as in this photo.

A bridge across the Weisser Weh in the Hurtgen Forest, Germany. In Nov 1944, 22nd Infantry Regiment, 4th ID fought through this part of the forest towards Grosshau. Landing on Utah Beach on 6 June, by the time they entered the Hurtgen Forest roughly only 23% of the D-Day originals were still in the rifle companies. By early December 1944 at the end of their ordeal in the forest l, that number had shrunk to 9%. One of the “less than 1 in 10 man still standing” was the father of a client this week. He survived the war from D-Day to VE-Day. One of the few. Back home he rarely talked about the war. And he never talked about the hell of the Hurtgen Forest; it was just too painful a memory, a nightmare. While walking her father’s trail, talking about the fighting, mines, shelling, the cold and constant wet, the forest that seemed to swallow up anything that entered it, her father’s experience and how it shaped him became clear. As my client put it: “My dad always has been my hero for what he did during the war. And now knowing what he went through here, he is even a bigger hero to me than he already was.”

Yesterday’s Market Garden Highlights Tour took us to (a/o) the John S Thompson bridge. In a textbook example of aggressive airborne action, Lt Thompson neutralised two pillboxes (see photo on one), captured a pumping station and secured the south side of the bridge with just 18 men. Few people know, however, that ‘Jocko’ Thompson was a pitcher for rhe Philadelphia Phillies before and after the war. A stunning surprise for yesterday’s US guests who are huge Phillies fans.

(Grand)uncle William was 18 when he enlisted in 1944. Initially posted and training with the Black Watch, he was sent across to Europe in Oct 1944. Shortly after his arrival on the mainland he and about 20 others were transferred to 1st Highland Light Infantry, attached to 53rd Welsh Division. The day after he and the others arrived at their new battalion, the went into battle attacking Den Bosch in NL. A fierce first battle which he survived. End of Dec 1945, 53rd Welsh Division relieved US 84th Div in Hotton - March-en-Famenne area in the Ardennes. On 4 Jan 1945 they joined the Americans in the counterattack on the northern shoulder of the Battle of the Bulge. Three days later, having fought through heavily wooded hills in gruesome Winter conditions, William was killed in action during an attack on 7 Jan 1945. Just 19 years and 8 days old, he now rests at CWGC Hotton. 3/end

(Grand)dad served as a Vickers machine gunner. A veteran of the BEF he survived Dunkirk. Via a few other postings he eventually joined 7th Manchesters, the heavy machine gun battalion of 52nd Lowland Division. On 4 Nov 1944, he crossed the Scheldt as part of reinforcements of 155 Brigade fighting in Flushing. On 6 Nov, his platoon boarded a Buffalo amphibious vehicle to support a company of 7/9 Royal Scots to crossed the flooded fields in an outflanking manoeuvre to seize Middelburg and the German HQ there. On the outskirts of Middelburg the Buffalo ran over a mine, killing some, wounding others. (Grand)dad was severely wounded and evacuated. His war was over after 5 years and 174 days in service. Hospitals and rehabilitation lay ahead. But he survived and lived a full life. 2/3

A 🧶 … One British family, two relatives from the same Scottish village who fought during WW2. One came back, the other sadly not. The last two days were an impressive and sometimes emotional tour in the footsteps of both men, taking the family to the very places where their relatives were during the war, to very spots where the lives of these two men were forever changed and finding answers for the family to questions that had existed many years on what happened and where. 1/3

Earlier this week, the #airbornemuseumhartenstein in Oosterbeek, NL opened a new exhibition on father and son Sosabowksi. The father, Stanislaw, raised and led the 1st Polish Independent Parachute Brigade which fought in Op Market Garden, while his son Stasinek fought with the Polish Underground Army in the Warsaw Uprising. The photo shows the banner of the 1st Polish Independent Parachute Brigade, a centrepiece in the exhibition. Made in Warsaw during the war, it was smuggled to the UK to be presented to the brigade. A truly unique and impressive historical object.