Day 1 Flight to London Day 2 London
Check into the hotel where the entire group will gather for an evening Welcome Reception. Participants will have an opportunity to get acquainted with each other and meet the historian and tour staff. Our historian will treat us to our first lecture; a brief overview of WWII will be presented, and sites we will be seeing in the days to come.
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 leave London for 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. The embroidery is a tribute to the sacrifice and heroism of the men and women who took part in Operation Overlord.
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: Allied Supreme Commander, General Eisenhower; Naval Commander-in-Chief, Admiral Ramsay; and the Army Commander-in-Chief, General Montgomery. 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.
Normandy: Please note that the order of the itinerary may change based on the ferry schedule, scheduled ceremonies at museums and cemeteries, and ease of accessibility to important sites.
Day 5 Caen
Following an early morning breakfast, 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 who 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. We will pay our respects at the cemetery.
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
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 101st Airborne, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment; the route Lt. Richard Winters 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. Today Brecourt Manor is a working farm usually closed to the public. 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, and the square from which General Maxwell Taylor presented awards to his men for their performance during the invasion.
Day 7 Caen
Rising early, we will 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. Our historian will describe the taking of this key crossing. 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. The combination of the historical D-Day imagery and the present day landscaping stunningly portrays the courage, suffering and heroism of the war.
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 stop at the Bridge at Troarn, the D-Day objective of
the 3rd Parachute Squadron, Royal Engineers.
We arrive in Paris early afternoon. Tour members can explore the city on
their own. Our hotel offers convenient access to the area around the Seine
River, the Eiffel Tower, Les Invalides (site of Napoleon’s tomb), Notre Dame
cathedral, the Tuileries gardens and the Louvre. The evening is free.
Day 9 Arnhem
After breakfast, 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.
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