Reviews

I loved this tour. It was better than advertised. Our historian, Casey Brower, was great. He knew lots of details that really enriched the tour and educated us. I will never forget the information he provided about the battle at La Fiere Bridge and Pvt. DeGlopper, Utah Beach, Omaha Beach, St. Mere Eglise, and so many other locations. The tour manager, Sabine, took care of everything; no hitches. The driver, Yohan, expertly navigated the tour on those narrow ancient streets.

I’m so glad to be given the opportunity to give my thoughts on the tour and the experience and I hope you don’t mind the outline form.
(1) First of all – The itinerary was very good, and it covered so many of the places my wife and I were interested in.
(2) The driver (Ramon), the tour manager (Madeleine) and historian (Rick) were awesome in their own individual ways but as a team, these 3 individuals added up to a team of 6.
a. Madeline (the tour manager) was fluent in French which helped tremendously on the journey with hotels and traffic.
b. Rick has written several books (six, I believe) and wrote and produced a film for PBS on the Ghost Army.
c. With the chaos and road closings/detours of the 80th anniversary, the three of them maneuvered us to other sites not on the original itinerary which turned out to be an extra bonus. We didn’t miss any site on the original itinerary.
(3) The hotels were all excellent and the service was exceptional. The only improvement I can think of was that the hotel we stayed in the longest had a fixed menu with no options. Usually, they offered a fish dish which was excellent but several people in our group did not like fish.
(4) The bus was very comfortable and had plenty of room.
There were additional benefits that we didn’t expect. Many of the people on the tour had a lot of knowledge about the D-Day invasion and several people including my wife had family members there on D-Day. The conversations and the stories were personal and informative.
In summary, it was an incredible trip, and we are looking into another Stephen Ambrose tour in the near future.
Jim

I was on the tour group that the CAF had arranged with SAHT. We had an excellent Tour Manager Keith Smith, who stayed on top of every issue that came up on our trip. Our Tour Historian BG Casey Brower was also excellent addition to the tour. He was very knowledgeable about the sequence of events surrounding D-Day and had plenty of source material to share with the members of our group. I would defiantly recommend this tour and hopefully will take it again next year.

My family and I returned from France only late last night and I wanted to dash off a few thoughts about our excellent 80th Anniversary of D-Day tour.

I am exceedingly grateful to Rick Beyer and Madeline Andersone for putting together such a wonderful experience. The logistics alone are daunting, and Madeline kindly, patiently, and graciously put up with my piddling questions and requests like the good host she is. Rick tells history the way I think it should be told, as a good story first that reveals the most honorable traits to be found in men and women. I’m also very grateful to our wonderful driver Ramon who kept us safe and was so pleasant to a bus-load of demanding individuals.

I really don’t have enough superlatives to tell you how wonderful I thought everything was, especially the thoughtfulness of the wreath for the dead of the 29th Field Artillery. That made remembering my dad, who, thank God, survived the day, special.

One final thing. As we walked back from the graves at the American Cemetery on Omaha Beach to our seats for the D-Day ceremonies, fellow traveler Ben Cohen asked me what my thoughts were. I told him I couldn’t think about it too much because I quickly become overwhelmed with emotions of loss and sadness at the tremendous sacrifices those young men made for us. There simply aren’t words adequate enough to describe the flood emotions.

What an amazing trip this was. I took my father with me. Our tour guide, Chris, was the most knowledgeable and passionate person on the subject matter that I’ve ever seen. He knew everything down to the smallest detail and had actually been at the sites before with former EZ Company members that told him, “this is the exact spot where this happened”, etc. We were there while the queen’s jubilee was going on in London and also the anniversary of D-Day in Normandy, so our schedule had to be adjusted a little bit to accomodate for crowds and traffic, but our bus driver and tour manager went above and beyond to make it all work. The tour manager did an excellent job of calling ahead to every place that we visited to make sure that they were still able to handle a bus of tourists as it had been a couple of years since any of these places had had visitors because of prior covid restrictions. All of our hotels were great, the meals were all timely and excellent, and the bus was comfortable. We saw a lot of museums and stopped at many important and some surprise sites along the way. Standing on the shores of Utah, Omaha and Juno beaches and imagining what it was like on D Day was an experience that I’ll never forget. Can’t wait to book another Stephen Ambrose tour.

Honestly – everything was so great. I cannot imagine any improvement on the content of the info. Ron was the best and all his stories and videos served to enhance the experience.