The Battlefield Explorer

The Kall Trail drops nearly 500 feet into a river gorge and served, improbably, as the 28th Infantry Division's main axis of advance toward Schmidt in November 1944. The attack failed within days. With the wounded stranded along this narrow path, German medical officer Hauptmann Stüttgen brokered several short ceasefires at the bridge so that medics from both sides could work together. The 28th Division took 6,184 casualties in six days of fighting. This memorial was placed on the bridge in 2004.

This is one of two raised platforms on Munich's Königsplatz, they are overgrown and easy to miss. They are the foundations of the Ehrentempel, Nazi temples built in 1935 to hold the sarcophagi of sixteen men killed in the failed Beer Hall Putsch. The Americans removed the bodies in 1945 and blew the structures up two years later. Plans to build a restaurant or biergarten on the site after reunification fell through when rare biotope vegetation was found growing in the ruins.

@Gorty674623 Yes and no: the allies bombed it on October 6 and 7 1944. The Germans later destroyed the remains.

@battlefieldexpl Except it isnt... The actual bridge was destroyed by the Germans, when they withdrew

The Arnhem bridge sits in the background, probably the most recognised bridge of the Second World War. In the foreground, a 25-pounder field gun. Explaining to my Arnhem Battlefield Tour group today why this gun has no connection to what happened here. At nearly a ton, airborne forces never carried 25-pounders. The 1st Airborne Division used 75mm pack howitzers, light enough to fit inside a Horsa glider. This gun is a memorial piece, not a historical match.

From up here, the beach at Dieppe looks exactly like what it was: a kill zone. The 1942 raid was planned with no naval bombardment and minimal air support, sending infantry across open shingle against fortified positions in the cliffs and seafront buildings. The 2nd Canadian Infantry Division took 68% casualties in under six hours. Lessons learned here shaped the planning for Normandy two years later, though that was cold comfort for the men on the beach.

@SeaSpitfires I had to be chauvinistic here and had to vote for the Jon Frost bridge

Most Famous Second World War Bridge Poll! North West Europe edition.

@battlefieldexpl It's a shame that on both sides of the bridge, the original buildings were demolished. Would be nice if they could be recreated in some form some day. just for memorial purposes because a lot of young men lost their lives in those buildings.

@EdChicken2 Indeed, but the exact same design as the wartime bridge so they are twin brothers

@battlefieldexpl And of course that's the post war replacement Arnhem bridge

@SeaSpitfires Yeah, okay, fair enough

@battlefieldexpl I dunno... I'd put my money on Pegasus Bridge as the most recognised

@Deepdiverx1 Well, not so much demolished as obliterated in the battle and the subsequent bombing there was nothing left to rebuild only holes in the ground

Dazzle camouflage on a Dutch-built bunker at the Grave bridge, recently repainted but with bullet damage still visible. These casemates were part of the Maas defence line, constructed by the Netherlands in the late 1930s when the Netherlands still hoped to stay neutral. By 17 September 1944, the first day of Operation Market Garden, it had been used by the Germans for over four years. John S. Thompson and his men from Easy Company 504th PIR secured the bridge and bunker within hours. They were the only ones to be dropped close to their objective and this paid off. The camouflage is now a memorial choice, not a military one.

@Konrad7Konrad 48 men killed almost all from one battalion in approximately 4 hours. We are talking about WWII here, not the Somme.

@battlefieldexpl KIA of the 82. Div. = ca. 48. Woundet =78. All together no great losses for a crossing by day.

Running a battlefield tour through the 82nd Airborne’s sector around Nijmegen today. This is the Waal, site of one of the war’s most audacious river assaults. On 20 September 1944, men of the 504th PIR crossed here in flimsy engineer boats under observed German fire. There was no element of surprise. British tanks suppressed what they could from the south bank, but casualties in the boats were heavy. Those who made the north bank seized the bridges before demolition charges could be blown.

@airbornemedic23 Thankfully!

Dawn's early light on the Onderlangs in Arnhrm..and all quiet today not like in September 1944....

The cross commemorates all the losses in the battalion during the Great War: 51 officers and 831 other ranks killed. Unveiled in 1923, the cross carries a Gaelic inscription: "friends are good on the day of the battle."

The 8th Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders were part of the 51st Highland Division, which took Beaumont-Hamel on 13 November 1916, four and a half months after the village was supposed to fall on the first day of the Somme.

A Celtic cross in French limestone stands at the entrance to the Sunken Lane at Beaumont-Hamel, lit against a heavy sky. However, this is not a 1 July 1916 Battle of the Somme memorial.

From 1933, the station was one of the main exit points for Jews leaving Germany, over 500,000 departures in total. From June 1942 it became something else entirely. At 06:07, from platform one, 116 trains departed carrying over 9,600 elderly Jewish Berliners to Theresienstadt. Regular coaches. Regular timetable. Theresienstadt was a transit camp. 3/3

The bombing raids of November 1943 destroyed most of it. What the bombs left standing, the West Berlin senate ordered demolished in August 1960. Only public pressure saved this section of façade. 2/3

One arch. That is what remains of the Anhalter Bahnhof in Berlin, once the largest station in continental Europe. It handled 44,000 passengers a day, with direct connections to Rome, Vienna, and Athens. 1/3