WWI Tour: Western Front

You will join your group at the designated tour hotel in Brussels. The group will gather for an evening Welcome Reception and dinner at the hotel. Your historian will provide an overview of the tour and there will be introductions all around.

A defining moment in European History, the June 18, 1815, Battle of Waterloo, redrew the map of Europe and altered the balance of power on the Continent. In the Allied victory over the French, however, lay the seeds of a conflict far more terrible than anything Napoleon or Wellington could have imagined.

After meeting in Brussels, you will travel to the Wellington Museum, located in the “Iron Duke’s” former headquarters, to see its amazing collection of artifacts related to the battle and the commander of the Allied army. Your first stop on the battlefield will be the recently renovated museum and visitor’s center, the famous cyclorama painting of the battle and Lion’s Mound, then a tour of the battlefield itself. You will then travel on to Ypres in the heart of the British sector.

In 1914 some of the first clashes between the Germans and the British Expeditionary Forces occurred around the town, which would remain a battlefield for the rest of the war. You will begin with the Ypres Salient at Essex Farm Cemetery, where Canadian writer John McCrae wrote the famous poem “In Flanders Fields.” Then it’s on to Hooge to visit remains of trenches and sites associated with the very first battles fought around Ypres. Nearby Langemark was the site of the first use of gas on the Western Front as well as the German military cemetery.

You will then tour sites around the Salient, including the battlefields of Passchendaele and the Memorial Museum Passchendaele 1917 and its unsurpassed collection of uniforms, weapons and other artifacts. You will also explore the huge British underground bunker complexes used by the British as well as preserved German and British trenches. You will finish the day with the incredibly moving Last Post Ceremony, which honors the 250,000 soldiers of the British Empire who died in and around Ypres and have no known grave.

Begun by the British in April 1917, the Battle of Arras was intended to be a diversionary assault on a larger French offensive launched along the Chemin des Dames further south. Events, however, meant that the battle grew in size and scope into one of the bloodiest encounters of the war.

You will view the remains of a German bunker used by Corporal Adolf Hitler while a runner in the Bavarian List Regiment. You will then continue on to Ploegsteert (Plugstreet to the British), where a young Winston S. Churchill commanded a battalion in 1915 and experienced horrors that would remain with him until he became prime minister at the start of World War II. From Ploegsteert you will stop outside the village of St. Yvon to see the spot where German and English soldiers ceased fighting to celebrate Christmas 1914 together. The Island of Ireland Peace Park and New Zealand Memorial, with its preserved German bunkers, will be your next stop. Your first day in Arras will be at the Wellington Quarry Museum where the group will travel 70 feet underground to see the 12 miles of tunnels that 20,000 men called home.

As you leave Arras by the old Roman road at the heart of the battlefield, you will make stops at each of the three defensive lines that the Germans held in such strength in June 1917. Next you will see the Canadian National Vimy Memorial to visit the preserved battlefield before taking a private tour of the trenches that Canadian engineers dug under the German lines prior to the battle. The next stop is Trescault where on November 20, 1917 nearly 400 British tanks crashed through the German front line and drove toward Cambrai.

The Battle of the Somme began July 1, 1916, and was the darkest day in the history of the British Army. Nearly 60,000 men would become casualties by sunset. For the next 141 days the soldiers of the British Empire hurled themselves against German positions along the Somme River. Your study of this five-month battle will begin at the Hawthorn Ridge Crater. You will then explore the preserved trenches at the Beaumont-Hamel Newfoundland Memorial before traveling on to the Ulster Memorial Tower and Schwaben Redoubt. After seeing the spot of the furthest British advance on July 1st, you will go to the Thiepval Memorial, which lists the names of 72,104 men killed on the Somme who have no known grave. The group finishes at the Butte de Warlencourt where the terrible fighting along the Somme finally came to an end.

Leaving the British sector of the front, you will visit the site of the airfield at Cappy where Manfred von Richthofen took off on his final flight. Moving on, you will enter the region of the Somme fought over by two untried American infantry divisions in 1918. You will follow the attack made by Doughboys from the 107th Infantry Regiment on September 29, 1918, as they broke through the “impenetrable” Hindenburg Line and suffered the highest casualties of any American Regiment on a single day of the war.

Your day will conclude along the Chemin des Dames, the 25-mile long road where General Robert Nivelle launched the disastrous offensive that cost France 188,000 casualties and precipitated the mutinies of 1917. You will tour the underground Caverne du Dragon where French and German soldiers fought a bitter underground war as well as the Point California where vestiges of some of the bitterest fighting along the Chemin des Dames remain.

With Russia’s exit from the war, the Germans were able to move some 50 fresh divisions to the Western Front to make one last great effort to win the war before millions of American soldiers could enter the fray. Launched in the spring of 1918, “Operation Michael,” crashed through Allied positions all along the Western Front and soon the Kaisers soldiers were within 50 miles of Paris. Desperate, Ferdinand Foch pleaded with American Expeditionary Force commander John Pershing to release untried American troops to plug holes in the line. Pershing agreed and in a series of engagements at Château-Thierry in May and Belleau Wood in June 1918 stopped the Germans once and for all.

You will begin your study of this history at the early American battlefields at Fère-en-Tardenois and AEF commander Pershing’s headquarters. Here, he and future Army chief of staff George C. Marshall planned the great American offensives at Sainte-Mihiel and the Meuse Argonne. Your next stop is Pershing’s headquarters, where according to Douglas MacArthur, Doughboys, “stormed and captured the Croix Rouge Farm in a manner which for its gallantry I do not believe has been surpassed in military history.”

You will then travel on to the Oise-Aisne American Cemetery to pay your respects to the 6,012 men buried there and the grave of poet Joyce Kilmer, the author of the famous poems “Trees” and “Rouge Bouquet.” Your visit will take you to the bridges held by elements of the 3rd Infantry Division against incredible odds in May, the impressive American memorial that sits on the heights overlooking Chateau Thierry, and then to Belleau Wood where, over the course of 25 immortal days, U.S. Marines fought a battle that is rightly remembered as one of the Corps finest hours.

Throughout the summer of 1918 American forces were part of the Allied effort to retake ground lost during Operation Michael. The Doughboys demonstrated that they were a competent and professional army ready to take on the best the Germans had. You will visit the tiny village of Chamery where, on July 14, 1918, President Theodore Roosevelt’s son Quentin had his last dog fight. You will finish the day in the ancient city of Reims, where you will have an opportunity to sample Champagne from celebrated local wineries.

No visit to the Western Front would be complete without a visit to the fortress city of Verdun and the surrounding battlefields. During this nearly year-long battle, France would endure greater losses than America has in all of its wars since the American Revolution until Desert Storm. Your first stop is the recently refurbished Memorial de Verdun. You will then travel on to the ghost village of Fleury where you will visit the Douaumont Ossuary, which contains the remains of 130,000 unknown soldiers, as well as the famous Trench of the Bayonets, where a protruding line of bayonets reminds us of the French soldiers still on duty. Lastly at Verdun is Fort Douaumont, the most important of the 19 forts and the site of some of the heaviest fighting in the 10-month long battle.

Involving more than 1.2 million men, the Meuse Argonne offensive is the largest land battle in American history and where the war was finally won. German warlord Paul von Hindenburg remarked after the war, “that the British food blockade and the American blow in the Argonne Forrest decided the war for the Allies.” Despite this, most Americans know very little about this climactic 47-day battle.

Your day begins at one of the largest sections of preserved trenches along the whole of the Western Front, the archaeological site at Massiges. Next you will go to the Valley of Moreau, where a dedicated team of volunteers has preserved one of the large German rest areas used by the Germans in the Argonne. We will discuss the battles fought near here by a young Erwin Rommel in 1918. At day’s end you will stop at Essay to see where George S. Patton led American tanks into combat for the first time.

Revisiting the American offensive of autumn 1918, you will go to the steeply wooded valley outside of Apremont where the “Lost Battalion,” gained immortality for its epic six-day defense. You will then travel on to Chatel-Chéhéry where you will walk in the very footsteps of Sergeant Alvin C. York, a former conscientious objector, who single handedly killed 20 Germans and captured 132 others. Your time in the Argonne concludes at the Musée de Romagne 14-18, a collection of artifacts discovered on the battlefields. Following lunch at the museum, there will be a short driving tour that visits the sites associated with future president Harry S. Truman and George S. Patton.

You will begin today at the Montfaucon American Monument, exploring the remains of the village destroyed in the fighting, and ascending to the top of the memorial. You will see the ground fought over during the largest battle in American history. From the memorial you will then go to the Meuse Argonne American Cemetery at Romagnes. The largest American cemetery in Europe, you will pay your respects to the 14,246 Americans buried there before heading to Paris. On the way there will be a stop in the Forest of Compiegne, where you will visit the clearing where, on November 11, 1918, the armistice that brought an end to the fighting was signed.

There will be one morning transfer to Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport (CDG) to catch your flight home.