Following breakfast, you will board the cross-channel ferry and embark for Normandy as the troops did in 1944.
For the next few days, site visits in Normandy will include:
Ste-Mère-Église where parts of the 101st and the 82nd Airborne descended on D-Day, one of many such villages targeted in the planning of Operation Overlord.
La Fiere Bridge where the 82nd Airborne successfully delayed a German Panzer counterattack against the Allied landing forces.
Brécourt Manor where Lt. Dick Winters and members of Easy Company successfully silenced the German artillery that was firing on American troops as they were landing at Utah Beach on D-Day.
Utah Beach where the 4th Division landed. You will walk the beach and you will visit the Invasion Museum that sits beyond the dunes. A short ride from Brecourt Manor, the exhibits there illustrate the challenges the invaders faced, and how they heroically persevered anyway.
Ste-Marie-du-Mont where stands the unique Renaissance-style steeple the Germans used as an observation post in defense of Hitler’s Atlantic Wall.
Pointe-du-Hoc where the elite Rangers of the 2nd Battalion, led by Lt. Col. James Rudder, scaled the 100-foot high and overhanging cliffs on D-Day to neutralize the German heavy guns. Firing down on the expanse of beaches from their perch between the Omaha and Utah landing zones, that massive artillery could have derailed the invasion had Rudder’s Rangers not taken them out.
Omaha Beach where the American invaders faced the strongest German resistance and incurred the greatest losses of the day. You will explore the sands from the low tide ebb to the distant bluffs, an exercise that conjures up terrific emotions. You will feel the courage, fea,r and passion the soldiers of the 1st and 29th Divisions experienced as they approached “bloody Omaha” on the morning of June 6, 1944. There and on subsequent days, they entered the “gates of hell” that they knew they must cross, the sandy ground that lay between the water and the shingle below the bluffs.
You will also visit some of the German defense fortifications on the cliffs, atop the dunes and on the bluff above the Allied landing zones.
The Normandy American Cemetery at Omaha where you will pay your respects for the American soldiers who gave their lives to win WWII during the Normandy Campaign. At this historic and buccolic spot, 9,387 graves stretch along the bluff overlooking the beach to memorialize the ultimate bravery and sacrifice paid by the veterans buried there.
German Bunker where you will view an extant battery that presents a fine example of the formidable obstacles that made up Hitler’s Atlantic Wall.
Pegasus Bridge where the first shots were fired on D-Day after the British Sixth Airborne carried out a miraculous glider landing at the bridge. In this attack just after Midnight on D-Day, the British paratroopers took the crucial bridge across the Caen Canal for the Allies.
This is also where in 1980 Stephen Ambrose and his wife Moira met the commander of the British Sixth Airborne, Major John Howard, who led the British gliders on D-Day. Following that chance encounter, Howard addressed the Ambrose tour group at the bridge. In just one example of the kind of relationships that have developed at these hallowed locations over the years, Howard’s impromptu speech about the action at Pegasus Bridge on D-Day started a long and fruitful collaboration; a chance meeting on tour that initiated a great friendship and led to Ambrose publishing his best-seller, Pegasus Bridge: June 6, 1944, about fifteen years later.
