In the ariport in Philly, talking to Babe before the flight. The guy sitting down is Kim. He was a marine.
Me and Wild Bill wait for the flight.
Shawn and I in London, getting off the bus and checking into the Strand Hotel, where we stayed our first night in London. We could soon come to hate that bus.
Obligatory tourist shot. It was Shawn's first time in London.
It was not, however, Trey's first time in London.
This is the pub near the Strand Hotel in London where went after dinner. I gather Easy folks went there as well back in the day, though Bill and Babe stayed in the hotel that night.
Tracy reflected in the name plate for the pub.
Our first pint in the UK. Hooray beer!
On the Waterloo bridge, heading south of the Thames. We had about 4 hours to kill in London, and though jet-lagged as all hell, I forced Trey to join me, Shawn and Tracy on a short walking tour of London.
Reading about the bridge, our touristy objective in sight.
Shawn regards boat traffic on the Thames.
Trey also enjoys an urban river setting. Note how sleepy he looks, even from afar.
Though we had tickets to the Eye, we really wanted a nap. But if you go to sleep at 3pm on your first day, you'll be up at 3am your first night...
One of what was to be more than a few self-portraits.
The Eye is fun!
But Trey wishes they sold coffee during the ride.
I shall title this one: "Now, don't you go taking my picture..."
Say cheese!
It was an exceptionally clear day. Perfect for a ride on the ferris wheel.
Another self-portrait.
Uh, guys... you're supposed to be looking out the windows. That's where London is.
See? I told you London is out there. You can clearly see it down there.
Tourist shot #27. (Note Trey finally has a coffee.)
I have to get in on the tourist action too.
Why enjoy the scenery with your real eyes when you can see all its majesty in very sharp detail on the video camera's 2.4 inch LCD screen?
Arrrr!
People kept looking at me funny. Since I'm used to that, I failed to notice that it was because I was taking a break next to a trash pile.
Tracy joins me next to the rubbish.
"Hey man, check this out! I think I see one in that window up there!"
Look right!
"Sod off, ya wally!"
At a war memorial in London.
Not sure where this was taken.
These are a group of re-enactors we met in Aldbourne, England. (Aldbourne was where the 501st was stationed for training prior to D-Day.) A few of these guys were in Saving Private Ryan, and/or Band of Brothers.
Bill and Babe in Aldbourne.
The vets review the troops.
Wild Bill and Babe pose with the troops. Oddly, this was one of the few days that Bill didn't wear a uniform of some sort.
Me outside the Post Office in Aldbourne. The window on the upper left is the room where Dick Winters and Harry Welsh were quartered. The house, incidentally, was owned by the Barnses, who got to be very close to Winters during and after his stay. They are buried up the road behind me.
There was another group of re-enactors at the other pub in town, the Blue Boar. These guys seemed a little more put together, with vehicles and everything. There were also more of them. (Both groups were very nice folks, too.)
Trey with his pint. This wasn't the first Jeep we'd be seeing...
This fellow (I think he was either Welsh or Scottish) was super-cool. Shawn got his card.
At the other pub. From what I could gather, officers hung out here, enlisted men at the Crown (where the first set of re-enactors were).
You'll note that Tracy has a girly pint. Finally. I was beginning to wonder what those smaller glasses looked like.
Babe holding court inside the Blue Boar.
The guy in the passenger seat is Frank, a Navy WWII vet. They're giving him a ride to the other pub in preparation for leaving. By the way, Frank is, hands down, one of the nicest people I've ever had the pleasure of meeting. (And any time I was grousing about bruises from the bus seats, lack of sleep, whatever, I'd think of Frank. He's in his mid-eighties and not once did I hear him utter even a single complaint.) He was one of those folks who made the trip a little brighter.
Babe talking to Sam (son of one of the re-enactors and another one of the highlights of the trip). I think Babe was explaining machine guns to him. Sam was enraptured.
This barn is just down the road from the Blue Boar pub. It's where the enlisted men of Easy Company were quartered. There used to be two barns (you can just make out the slab of the other to the right), but one was hauled off to a museum or something in the States.
Outside the Crown Pub, gathering for the bus ride to Littlecote Manor, where the 101st headquarters was.
Re-enactors get ready to salute us as we leave for Littlecote House (where the 506th had its headquarters).
Sam again.
This is Shawn and I in the room at Littlecote where Col Sink had his office. If you recall that scene in Band of Brothers where the NCOs turn in their stripes because of Sobel's incompetence, this is the actual room that event took place in. In fact, Wild Bill told us that the chair Shawn is sitting in is almost exactly where Sink's was, and facing the same direction, too (his desk would have been where that table was).
I got up on a wall at Littlecote to take a panoramic shot, and wound up getting a bird's eye view of Shawn.
Walking back to the bus at Littlecote.
Cool looking structure at Littlecote.
They dug up some Roman stuff a while back on the grounds at Littlecote. Tracy and I went up to see it all, but ended having to run back to catch the bus. It was, I will proudly note, the one and only time that we were late for the bus.
Getting on the ferry at Portsmouth. We were only there for one night, and (as usual) left pretty early in the morning.
This is the HMS Victory.
The structure in the background is The Spinnaker. The fortifications in the foreground are some of the few remaining from WWII. The Royal Navy is based in Portsmouth, and it took a beating during the war.
A quaint little house in Normandy. After a while, scenery outside the bus like this got almost boring.
A bunker at Omaha Beach. This one was one of a pair that gaurded a draw in the hills along the beach. (The road in the foreground runs through the draw to the left and then to the hedgerow country inland.) The defenses are pointed inland somewhat so as to catch in a crossfire any traffic wanting to use the road. The draw separated the Dog Red and Easy Green landing areas, and is near the town of Colleville-sur-Mer. The folks who took this bunker went through a lot of tough fighting, and eventually knocked it out with an anti-aircraft gun. There are pock marks from .50 caliber and other small arms fire all over the thing.
Shawn peeking out from a shell hit. This is on the opposite side of the bunker shown on the last pic. All the "dimples" in the concrete are from bullet impacts.
Me and Shawn venture in. You can just make out some of those bullet dents I mentioned in the ironworks just above my head.
The Rhodes Boys and the bunker.
Me up on the hill above that bunker. The camera is facing east. To give you a sense of scale, you can't even see the British and Canadian landing sites in this picture, which were to the east of the US landing areas. Look at a map of the D-Day landings and you can get an idea of exactly how huge an effort the landing was.
Tracy coming down the hill. By the way, the hill behind here is what the infantry had to fight up. With entrenched Germans at the top. It was nasty, nasty walking, much less fighting. The movies don't even come close to getting that part right.
These are bushes at the top of the ridge above the beach. Imagine that you have to go *through* these. With people on the other side shooting at you. Amazing...
Tracy up on the ridge at Omaha Beach. Looking east again.
Me and Tom Barkley looking at the nasty little thorns all over that hedge.
Looking west from the top of the ridge.
Tracy tests the "Ow!" potential of the thorns. They were judged to be not welcoming.
Another view of the bunker, looking south. Colleville-sur-Mer is down that road and to the right.
Shawn down on the sand at Omaha.
I brought a bunch of maps with me. Since most of what you see is either in the movies or maps in books, I wanted to bring some with me so that I could relate them to the real-world terrain and get a feel for the scale of things. The guy pointing is our tour director, Ray. To say that Ray is a little knowledgable about WWII is like saying that the ocean is slightly damp.
Ray explaining more about the actions on D-day. He runs week-long tours of just Normandy and I'm thinking of going.
Me and Trey on Omaha Beach. I grabbed some sand, too.
Tracy and I on Omaha.
On the road which runs along the beach. We're driving west. The monument there is where the first US cemetary was. But a beach is a bad place to put a cemetary...
A bunker in the hills. They're dotted with little concrete emplacements like this. I don't know if you can go in them or not. I'd like to.
The large, square concrete thing is lart of the old Mulberry Harbor system from the British sector of the D-Day panding sreas. It was moved here as a monument. There's no guard rails, either. I saw an older French fellow fall off the far edge while trying to get a picture. He hit the rocks on his back and his legs where moving limply in the water. I didn't know how to call for help, but luckily another fellow spotted him. I also didn't know how to say "You really shouldn't be dragging him around on the sand after a spinal injury" in French, so I hope the guy who pulled him out of the water didn't harm him further. An ambulance arrived in short order.
A monument on Omaha. We're looking east.
A German PaK 43. This is what they call a "German Eighty-eight". It was an anti-tank gun, and mounted on a towed carriage, in a fixed emplacement (like in this beach defense) or on a tank (it was the primary armament on the Tiger II Panzer, in fact). Ray told us that he's had vets on his tours get physically ill when they see a monument with an 88 in it.
Another view of the 88.
At Omaha.
This is on the "backside" of the ridgeline at Omaha. This was built so that they could fire at troops marching inland.
This is a reconstructed portion of the Mulberry Harbor. It's a monument to the engineers.
An old Norman beach defense at Port-en-Bessin.
Sadly, they had the entrance to the fort barred.
Some sort of fortification on the ridge line. I said it was a machine gun emplacement, others said a mortar pit.
A little cafe at Port-en-Bessin. Some of us hiked up the hill and took a look at the defense works there, while "others" spent time taking in the local scenery.
Fish, plankton, protein from the sea!
I saved Babe's life here. What happens is, when a ship wants to come in they sound this buzzer and lower the guard rail. Then the road swings aside and the ship passes. Well, I guess Babe didn't know this, since right after the buzzer, he steps onto the swinging part of the road. Then the guardrail comes down, right down where his head was. And it comes down *fast*, too. So I jump in, grab it before it could hit him, and shout at him to back up. He doesn't understand why, but backs up a little anyway. Meanwhile, the bridge operator is moving the guardrail up a little and then back down, buzzing at me like crazy, and I'm still holding onto it, but it's getting harder to push back up the more he does it. I end up shouting pretty much every curse word I can think of in as many languages as I know, and finally the guardrail stops trying to kill us. Babe backs up, I let the thing go, and then I look around for the the operator so I can flip him off in proper American style.
Babe isn't fazed by the action. He called the moving bridgeway "a bridge too far". Pretty glib for an 84 year old guy...
And if you drive onto the swinging roadway whilst it's been swung, this can happen.
Weird art in Normandy.
This is entrance to the American Cemetary at Utah Beach. The guy in the tie is the assistant director.
Frank at the Normandy Cemetary.
A sculpture at the Normandy Cemetary. It's called "Spirit of American Youth". To either side of it (out of the picture) are these big wall maps of the action that happened in WWII in Normandy.
The vest lay a wreath at the foot of the sculpture in Normandy Cemetary. You can see a red arrow from one of the wall maps in the upper left.
Bill's looking at one of the wall maps. Ray is about to explain what happened on D-Day, using the map as a guide.
Here they are in front of the map.
I think I took this picture about the same time as Tracy took the previous one.
This is the wall of names in the Garden of the Missing at the Normandy Cemetary. It has the names of everyone who died and whose remains were never recovered.
The Wall at the Normandy Cemetary.
Me and Dave with Babe in the Garden of the Missing. You can see more of the wall behind us.
Tracy with Babe in the Garden.
Me with Babe and a fellow whose name I can't recall.
Babe and his daughter, Trish. I dig this picture.
Me by the steps to the Garden. The large sculpture where the wreath was laid is just behind me.
Anotehr view of the D-Day map. It took a minute to realize that north is down on this map.
A solemn view of the Garden of the Missing. It was a fairly sad place.
The colors at the Normandy Cemetary. I believe Frank hoisted this flag.
There are far too many graves there. They stretch on and on...
...as you can see here.
Ray was giving a talk about the Niland brothers (basis for Saving Private Ryan), and Tracy happened to look down and notice this grave marker with my name on it. Kind of spooky.
The graves of the Niland brothers.
More graves. It's a pretty cemetary, but very sad.
Looking back toward the sculpture and the maps.
Ray's giving a talk about Franklin Roosevelt Jr.'s grave.
And there it is.
I found the unknown graves to be the hardest to think about. I couldn't look at them for too long, because eventually I'd think about someone's family visting a grave, and nobody visiting this one. Though someone would probably like to...
Omaha Beach. The Normandy Cemetary is over to the right.
The Dead Man's Corner museum. The gun in the center is a Flak 37 (an "88", kind of like the one we saw on Omaha). It's here because the guy who owns the museum knows a fellow who runs another museum in Normandy. This other guy happened to have this "extra" cannon sitting in his backyard, and donated it to this museum (which is fairly new).
Another view of the 88. It was rusted and weathered, but you could still see the dials and handles and such on it.
Getting out of the bus at the Dead Man's Corner Museum. Note the press. There were several newspaper and TV crews there. Babe and Bill are like rock stars over there. That was cool to see.
The entrance to the museum proper. It has a lot of 101st stuff in it (like Winters' footlocker, etc).
The Rhodes boys on the 88.
They also had a suprisingly large gift shop. I bought a tanker jacket and some boots there.
WWII vets get asked to sign the counter at the gift shop.
This fellow is from a newspaper called Ouest France. He interviewed Tracy and later took a picture of Tracy, me and Wild Bill outside the museum just before we left. The picture (and interview) made it into the newspaper: http://tinyurl.com/s2tpr
This is at Utah Beach. It's part of a recreation at a restaurant in what was a German communications center.
The museum at Utah. The actual beach is behind the Sherman tank. The building on the right is the museum.
This is Mile Marker Zero on the Liberty Highway. The actual invasion took place just behind this.
I took a lot of pictures of tanks. This one was pretty rusty.
This is a Landing Craft, Vehicle, Personnel, or LVCP -- also known as a Higgins Boat. This is what brought troops to the beach. If you recall the scene in Saving Private Ryan where the troops are sloshing around and then the door on the boat drops, this is the kind of boat depicted in the movie.
Old beach obstacles.
Taken from the museum steps. The picture which has the "Mines cleared to bunker" door was taken in front of the little grey building on the left (just under the antenna).
The front of the musem.
Trey at the zero marker.
Down on the beach.
A tetrahedron and obstacles.
Trey checking out the Sherman.
Shawn and I on Utah Beach.
Trey and me on Utah. Comared to Omaha, it's pretty small. And there's no ridge line for advanced defenses. The soldiers here had it comparitively easy, though it wasn't a walk in the park by any means.
Us in front of the tank. And no, I'm not getting fat. That bulge under my coat is me trying to keep the video camera dry.
Another view of the Higgins Boat.
I can't recall the name of this vehicle. It's like a tank that swims in the water.
Me in a machine gun emplacement. This would have had a metal turret thing mounted over the hole.
Another view.
We're discussing theories of operation.
Vehicles on display at the museum. Just behind the railing you can see the kind of turret that would have been on that fortification I was climbing around in earlier out on the beach.
Trey's back there in the orange hat, looking at a really cool diorama.
Another view of the turret (in the foreground). The vehicle to the left is a DUKW, known as a "Duck". It's an amphibious 2 1/2 ton truck.
This is the diorama Trey was looking at. I found it fascinating. It depicts the invasion cronologically, from left to right. I was even more impressed when I found out that a 15 year old made it.
A close up view. The level of detail was amazing.
Babe outside Brecourt.
Wild Bill Guarnere and me in the field at Brecourt. The guns he helped silence were situated in a ditch behind the camera.
Me and Bill chat as we walk out to the place where the guns were.
The manor, as seen from the field. Apparently, it was crawling with Germans.
Me near the ditch next to the ditch where the guns were. Nothing remains of the actual emplacement. Wild Bill told me that the "trenches" weren't like what was in the Band of Brothers DVD at all. It was this one long, straight ditch, and was only about waist deep. I said "Just enough to crawl down?" and Bill replied "Crawl?! Hell... run!"
Looking stright down the trench. The guns were in little dugouts just to the left of the trench. Utah Beach, by the way, is off to the right, about 2.5 miles away. The tree sticking up in the distance to the left is the one that Lipton climbed up into in order to get a better view of the situation.
Trey at Brecourt.
Inside the actual manor courtyard. It was a cool place.
Tracy at the manor.
And me at the manor.
This is a monument to WWI veterans in the town of Sainte-Marie-du-Mont. In the Band of Brothers DVD, the scene where the soldiers are relaxing in a town square, the morning after the landings, attempted to depict this monument. They got it wrong.
Me near a road sign. The little square thing to the left is an old water pump. A paratrooper from the 101st killed (I believe) 5 Germans while taking cover behind it. He was also killed. You can see bullet impacts in the stone even today. It was a little eerie.
The monument again.
The town of Sainte-Marie-du-Mont. The church is to the left.
Another self portrait.
Frank, Bill and Babe, about to lay a wreath on the monument.
The folks in Sainte-Marie-du-Mont haven't forgotten what happened.
This is a plaque in the town hall.
Me near the town hall (which is to the left).
The town hall at Sainte-Marie-du-Mont.
I never got to go into the museum, unfortunately.
Woodwork inside the town hall.
The mayor of Sainte-Marie-du-Mont is the fellow in blue. The drinks on the table are Kir Normand, a sort of currant liqueur. The book at the head of the table is the town's registry of citizens. Tracy (along with a few others) was made an honorary citizen of Sainte-Marie-du-Mont, and had to sign her name in the book.
The Rhodes Boys at the monument in Sainte-Marie-du-Mont.
This is us taking a look at the place where that US soldier died while fighting. While I was there, a very real feeling of gloom (for lack of a better word) came over me. I was standing in the exact location where an airborne soldier was shot and killed while trying to liberate France. Part of the reason I wanted to go on the trip was to make that period in history more visceral, so I could get a real sense of what had happened. I wanted to elevate history from the level of John Wayne movies and TV shows like Combat. I realized I had succeeded at about this point, and I ws a little sad.
Me looking at a bullet impact.
And us again.
Inside the church at Sainte-Marie-du-Mont. Babe is to the left, paying his respects.
There was actually some fighting in the church. In the lower center of the glass, you can see a bullet hole. Shawn and I guessed it was from a .45.
The church at Sainte-Mère-Église. The paratrooper up there is actually a memorial to John Steele. He got hung up on the church during the drop the night before D-Day and could only watch the action. This event was depicted in the movie The Longest Day (Red Buttons played Steele). Wild Bill landed in the parking lot outside the church, miles from his drop zone.
Another view of the Steele Memorial.
Stained glass inside the church. Note the paratroopers.
Another window in the church.
That same window.
Me outside a cafe in Sainte-Mère-Église.
Looking up at a building in Sainte-Mère-Église.
They had a glider in the Airborne Musem at Sainte-Mère-Église.
And they had a C-47.
And a half track.
The Iron Mike memorial in Normandy.
The Iron Mike Monument has this really cool bronze diorama that depicts what action took place. The bridge in the background was the site of some particularly heroic actions. The Germans wanted to get across it and get into the village off to the left (out of the picture). The Airborne denied them from corssing. The little river in the background doesn't look formidable, but it was deep enough to prevent crossing by foot, and wide enough to stop vehicles, hence the action on the bridge.
A plaque at the Iron Mike memorial.
Trey at the memorial.
Shawn and I regard the bridge, imagining having to defend it from mechanized infantry approaching from the right.
The bridge over the Merderet river. The 82nd Airborne prevented Germans from crossing this bridge, which kept them from resupplying units in the US landing areas. They did this at great cost to themselves. A few DSCs were given out here. If the 505th hadn't held this bridge, tanks would have rolled down onto the newly-arriving paratroopers, causing enourmous casualties, as Ste Mere-Eglise would have been totally exposed if they didn't hold the bridge. You can read more here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/16833954@N00/236844322/
The wheels had come off the bus. It was a good day for the Americans.
This is a little bunker where Patton's 4th Armored Division "linked up" (you do NOT say "rescued" around Bill or Babe) with the besieged 101st around Bastogne.
Babe makes sure to point out the phrasing "met with". You'll note, as we did, that there is no mention of a rescue.
For some reason, the farms around Bastogne have little tiny horses on them. And we had no idea why. They also had weird looking cattle. I'm still curious as to whether or not I ate one of them.
A house in Bastogne. Tracy and I think it's haunted. No lights came on at night, proof that ghosts can see in the dark.
Military vehicles at an air base in Bastogne.
A Belgian officer. I sure hope he doesn't find himself in the desert in that uniform...
The sign at the entrance to the base.
This jeep is owned by a fellow named Jean-Pierre. He had wanted a jeep since the age of 8, nad told us that "30 years later, I have finally my dream to come true". Good for him.
Tracy near the jeep.
They call it the Nuts Cave, but it's actually a barracks. It's the place where MacAuliffe replied to the German demand of surrender with the word "Nuts!"
Shawn near the jeeps.
Babe gets a ride.
Bill does too.
There's Jean-Pierre to the left, with the medic's arm band.
Frank outside the nuts cave. They don't normally let people down there.
The Belgians have a fairly loose policy with regard to painting warning signs. These were hand-drawn.
Outside the barracks. Jane's to the right. She'd been on the 2004 Easy Tour.
I'm playing a tiny, invisible trumpet in this self-portrait.
The display in Cave Nuts.
Shawn and I talk to Bill and Babe about mortars.
The vets get mobbed for autographs. They're both happy to sign whatever you want. "It's what we're here for", they'd say. Those guys are amazing.
Tracy and I by Jean-Pierre's jeep.
Bill and Babe signed his jeep.
Here's me and Jean-Pierre. He was a really cool guy. We kept calling him "La Leffe". At some point during the morning, he was rooting around in his jeep for some water, and found a liter bottle of Leffe beer. So he gets this happy look on his face, holds the bottle up high and shouts to his buddies, "Hey! La Leffe, la Leffe!". And then he starts to open the bottle (it had a wire-bound cork) and pass it around. And that's how it goes at 10 am on a Belgian military base.
"Yes, that is my rope there."
I'm checking the action on a demilled Thompson one of the guys had.
And I got to brandish it a little, too.
This is Mark, one of the cooler guys on the trip. He's a land developer out of Phoenix, AZ. We hung out with him a lot. I was calling him "Old Blood and Puking His Guts Out" after this picture.
This is Mark's business partner, Dave. He's a pretty cool guy as well. We met him in line at the Philly airport, actually. He saw Shawn's tour badge, and we struck up a conversation right there.
German graffiti on a wall of the barracks.
The vets with the re-enactors.
A badge on the front of the jeep.
Trey checks out the Garand.
The vets with the helicopter pilots.
Jane and Jean-Pierre.
The guy on the left is the head of the re-enactors group. The guy on the right is the fellow who set up out access to the military base.
Re-enactors by the 101st memorial outside the Bois Jacques (the forest to the right where Easy was during the Bulge).
A Belgian helicopter.
The mayor of Bastogne.
A moment of silence.
The Bois Jacques. The town of Foy is on the other side of the forest, to the right.
Babe and his daughter lay a wreath.
Bill at the memorial. He was pretty quiet.
At the Mardasson Memorial in Belgium. I'm making a run for the spiral stairs to the left. We didn't have much time there. They built this in 1950, only 5 years after the war. They were still rebuilding everything else, but took the time and effort to honor the vets who liberated them. Incredible.
"Hallo down there!"
Obligatory pic for Tracy's Oregon relatives.
Trey up on top.
And Tracy down below.
Arizona represent, yo.
That tower in the background is on the Belgian military bas we where at. To the left of it is the city of Bastogne. The bronze triangle thing explains what action took place here.
A close up of the map.
We're heading back to the bus.
This is me on an M10 Tank Destoyer. It was nicknamed the "Wolverine".
Bill and Babe in the Bois Jacques.
A foxhole. There were a lot of them still there. I couldn't shake the feeling that some looked like graves.
At the Luxembourg American Cemetary.
A wall map depicting action in the Ardennes, at the Luxembourg American Cemetary. I found these maps fascinating, and spent a lot of time looking at them.
A church outside our hotel window in Eindhoven.
Dutch roadside art.
The bridge at Nijmegen. This was the southernmost bridge in the chain of bridges in Operation Market Garden (and therefore the one farthest from the Bridge Too Far).
At the musem in Nijmegen, on Liberation Day. They also had a flea market, face painters, a guy playing bagpipes, and many other odd things.
We're about to watch a movie. I'm desparate to get a copy. It was (unintentionally) hilarious.
We didn't find the expression on this mannequin's face to match the caption on his display.
And neither did Tracy.
Outside the museum.
That's a little wooden guy Tracy bought at the flea market. He's sitting on the treads of an M4 Sherman.
Hey, if the little kid can climb on the tank, I can too.
It's a very strange museum.
Here's the piper I mentioned.
Tracy is finally wearing her orange hat, after getting a dressing down from Babe (who was "irrigated" that she wasn't wearing it yesterday).
As we were leaving the museum, Babe got on the bus PA and said that, contrary to what everyone's been told, there's a church in town that he was at when the counterattack started. He said that he was up in the bell tower, saw the Germans coming and warned everyone. After a little driving, Babe located the church.
Babe's explaining what happened at the church.
Bill and Babe pose.
"You sure this is the place, Babe?" "Of COURSE I'm sure, I was HERE for cryin' out loud. Don't make me irrigated..."
Tracy, wearing her hat.
This sergeant major of the 82nd was on hand for a wreath laying in Holland.
In Eindhoven. I'm still wondering what a "winkel" is...
Apparently, you're not allowed to urinate here.
At the hotel in Eindhoven.
A cute pic of Tracy.
We thought this dog was funny.
I saw this door and had to stop. I wish my front door was like this.
After abotu two hours of walking around downtown Eindhoven, we found a place to do laundry.
How many geeks does it take to figure out a Dutch washing machine?
Dutch graffiti.
It take 3 geeks and one Tracy to figure out the washer.
This was our lunch setting that day. Actually, it was breakfast, too. We got a lot of odd looks from people coming in to drop off their clothes.
Shawn's contemplating opening a cafe.
"Yeah, uh... I'm not really sure either..."
The grocery store across the street from the laundromat has some sort of rodent mascot, complete with masks for the kids. Or, in this case, the adults.
Here's Pinocchio in the dryer.
Shawn tries out the rodent mask.
Beer was something of a theme on our trip.
You can't tell who this is.
This was LIberation day in Eindhoven. An afternoon with nothing to do? Hmmm, I bet there's a pub somewhere...
This is Sam the dog. The window behind him has a "No Dogs" sticker on it.
The Eindhoven city hall get's prepped for the parade -- whiched turned out to be something like 5 hours long. With no bathroom breaks. And we were at a pub all afternoon. We only made it about 1 1/2 hours before our back teeth were floating. Sad, too, because Malarkey was here that day, and Dick Winters called in and said hello.
You will note how patriotically orange we all are. And I'm wearing my spiffy new M43 jacket, which, I might add, is incredibly comfortable.
At the Luxembourg American Cemetary. Babe and Bill took this one especially hard. A lot of Easy Company guys are buried here (including all the ones killed at the Bois Jaques).
Patton is buried here. he used to be buried among the troops. Graves were assigned randomly, so (contrary to the rules) because his family requestsed that he lay at rest among the men, he was just given a random place. But all the visitors wore out the grass and such, so in the 50s he was moved here.
The crosses stretch on and on. It really makes the cost of the war hit home. That cemetary is BIG.
I'm not sure where this was. Eindhoven, I think.
Trey is trying on the Oktoberfest hats for sale at a rest area in Germany.
Shawn fancies the elf hats.
More picturesque countryside in Germany. There is a lot of pretty countryside in Germany and Austria.
Germany again.
This is what passes for a "truck stop" in Germany. Suck it, Indio, CA.
We went into Austria to get to Berchtesgaden (which is in Germany).
Me in front an an alp.
The old palace residence thing in Berchtesgaden.
Detail from a very odd mural in the old town square in Berchtesgaden.
Sam the WWII pilot and Bob the Korea vet relax in Berchtesgaden.
Up on that hill is the Eagle's Nest.
The view from the porch of our hotel room in Berchtesgaden. Yeah, it was ok.
A porch like that demands a cuban.
At the halfway point to the Eagle's Nest. You park in this big lot and then get tickets for these buses that run every 40 minutes or so.
This is the entrance to the tunnel which leads to the gold elevator at the Eagle's Nest.
Me in the tunnel. It was cold and wet in there.
More tunnel. It has a 3 degree downward slope, and the temp was about 40 degrees. I got a video of the entire process of entering the Eagle's Nest.
Shawn and me in the gold elevator.
In the main hall. Everyone on the left is looking at the fireplace which Mussolini gave to Hitler as a gift. It's in sad shape, as GIs chipped off chunks of it to take home.
Shawn and I in the external hallway at the Eagle's Nest. If you recall that scene in Band of Brothers where the officers are hanging out on the porch and Winters comes to tell them that the war if over, this is that porch.
Shawn takes a video in Eva Braun's room. It's just off the main room with the fireplace.
The Eagle's Nest is on Kelhstein Mountain.
Tracy at the summit.
Me and Wild Bill at the Eagle's Nest. This was taken shortly after one of the snotty waiters kicked Bill out of the eating area because he wanted to sit down, and didn't want to eat. Would you kick a tired, 84 year old, one-legged veteran out of a chair, just seconds after he sits down with a sigh? No, I wouldn't either. I suspect that you have to be German to have the inclination to do that. And they weren't even short of chairs or anything! I was going to tell the guy off and demand that Bill be allowed to sit, but the waiter ran off and Bill said "Awwww, the hell with it." So I pointed out some benches over by the railing. Bill asked if I wanted a photo before he sat down. I figured that would be swell, so I got a German tourist to snap this pic.
The rocky crags above the Eagle's Nest.
One of the few photos of all of us together.
Tracy tries the self-porttrait thing.
Bill and Babe hanging outside by the parking lot, waiting for a bus.
The big steel doors to the tunnel entrance have graffiti all over them. The GIs carved all manner of stuff into those doors.
Me and Tracy get a pic with Babe.
Shawn is not happy. He wasn't fond of the fellow he was sitting next to.
This is in the Documentation Center (which is like a museum of Nazi stuff). It's the entrance to a tunnel complex that connected all the buildings on the mountain. The tunnels were exactly like being in a video game. "Have we been in there before?" "Yeah, I think we cleared that level..." These tunnels were another highlight of my trip. I wish I could build something like that myself.
This used to have a machinegun barrel sticking out of it. It's aimed at the front door.
One of the rooms in the tunnel system.
This was an elevator shaft. The white stalactites are either salt crystals or calcium carbonate of some variety.
This is looking towards the entrance of the complex (that light you see is the doorway inside the Documentation Center). This room was supposed to be an air lock.
I'm imagining that my video camera is an MG42.
Another view out of the gun port. The fuzzy lights you see are on the wall of the stairway leading to the old front door.
This is a really cool map that had. It shows Hitler's house, the bunkers, Goering's house, the Eagle's Nest, etc. The room beyond it is the airlock and the front entrance is lit up behind it.
This is the foundation to Hitler's house, the Berghof. There are no signs pointing to it, and no guardrails or anything. Our tour guide told us how to get there. The house was blown up shortly after the war, and the Germans are going to let the forest reclaim it.
The Rhodes boys at Hitler's house, wishing we could take a whiz on it.
Tracy's sturdy shoes outside the Berghof.
Another view of the foundation. If you recall that famous movie of Hitler's house where the big bay windows were, the windows would have been situated just above and behind that lower wall, and started at about that roundish thing and come towards the camera.
The way to get to the ruins of the Berghof is by going to this parking lot and then heading off into the woods for about 400 yards. These stairs take you back to the Documentation Center.
Mark and Dave share a moment with Babe. I have a video of their conversation I'm going to send to Mark.
The hills are alive...
Zell-am-See, Austria. It was absolutely gorgeous. The water was about 70 degress and clear as crystal. I can see why Winters wanted to go for morning swims.
Tacy and I in Zell-am-See
Trey writes a postcard to Lawrence (his 10 year old son).
We all found Steigl beer to be quite tasty. Handy that the WC is "around the corner" then, eh?
Self-portrait with a stealthy shot of Babe, Trish and Bill. We somehow wound up with 5 beers and gave one of them to Bill.
I'm not sure what this is. We saw these "straw men" all over the place there. I think it's to do with some sort of festival. This one smelled like a sheep.
Me regarding a church in Zell-am-See.
Those Austrians have some wacky ideas about their nightlife...
Our hotel in Berchtesgaden is to the left. The name literally means "The Four Seasons". The "H" sign, by the way, is a bus stop. That's me talking to Mark in the lower right. We're likely finguring on where to meet up after dinner.
The front door at Dachau. Prisoners were marched through this door, and it's the one that has the "Arbiet Macht Frei" on it. This was a terribly sad place.
Each tree marks where a barracks used to be. Originally designed to hold 200 people, they wound up holding 500+ towards the end of the war.
On the way to the ovens.
This is where people were killed.
A monument to those who were murdered by the Nazis.
Now this is grim. On the outside of the building are these two doors. They look like something you'd use for making a night deposit at a bank. If you were depositing Zyklon B and your bank had several hundred "Untermensch" in the vault, that is. It was little things like this that had the most effect on me. I'd notice something, and my mind would immediately assign some "normal" use for it. But normal people didn't buidl anything here, and pretty much everything in the place was designed to facilitate genocide. It usually took about three seconds to go from "I wonder if they used that for..." to "Holy shit. That's evil." I came away from Dachau feeling very down.
The room I'm in was used for disrobing. The door opens up to the "showers".
And this is in the showers. See those two grates? That's where the bank deposit doors in the outside wall are. They'd load up the doors with canisters of gas, shut them in and the gas would poison the people being "showered". The grates in the ceiling aren't for water. They're part of a venting system for when the murder was complete.
People were fed into these ovens. According to the info on the wall, there was sometimes a normal, orderly progression about things. They march a person in, hang him/her from the rafters overhead, take them down when dead and stuff them in the oven. I noticed that they had cleaned the ovens very well, but there were still bits of dust in there. I couldn't help but wonder if there still lingers ashes from some poor soul. The entire room is infused with it. it's a tomb.
The back of the murder building. The doors to the right lead to the back of the furnaces.
This was fun for those sick bastards, I bet. You can barely make it out, but to the left is a thick wall. Just in front of that is a small trench, running downhill slightly to the left. Right behind that tree is a little clearing. What they'd do is march a bunch of people in, stand them in front of the wall and then shoot at them with rifles from about 10 feet away. The trench was to collect the blood and carry it away so a new batch could be marched in. God forbid the Nazi assholes get any on them.
People were dumped here.
There's a big hole under these concrete slabs. The (still hot, I presume) ashes were dumped in here.
Outside the fence. Some of the fence wires were electrified.
At the final dinner. Bill's using a napkin for a hat. Tracy wound up getting that napkin.
And here it is. Bill drew the Airborne logo on the left of it, and threw it to Tracy ("Here you go, sweetheart"). Babe, not to be outdone, demanded it so that he could draw something as well. The ship he drew is named "Never Sail", by the way. Babe had me show to to Ray the tour guide (who was in the Navy for 22 years). There were many people desirous of that napkin.
Bill plants a kiss on Patsy.
Bill's signing a book for my grandfather.
And now babe signs.
Ray, Christy, Tracy and myself.
Shawn with Bill and Babe.
Tracy must have been trying out the macro lens or something.
This is us in Philly before our trip, on an excursion to see the Liberty Bell.
I'm apparently doing a jig outside Westminster Abbey.
It pays to know the rules when in a foreign country.
Not only is it weird that the Americans sit near rubbish, it's also odd that two others take pictures of it.
The vets in Aldbourne.
Shawn and a soldier swap hats for guns. This fellow was pretty impressed by the array of items in the safe back home.
Shawn outside Winter's Aldbourne quarters at the Post Office.
A plaque on the wall at the Blue Boar pub.
Another photo of Sam. Man, was he a cute kid. Really into military history and very serious about it, too. It reminded me of me and Trey and Shawn.
Shawn sits where Col Sink did.
"Beer served by a young broad? Let me at it...."
I'm sure the old folks staying at Littlecote were simply aghast that I was climbing on the garden wall.
Esso hoists one at the pub in Port-au-Bessin,
Me and Shawn monkey around where Germans used to be.
Political cartoons in the Utah Beach Museum.
Brecourt Manor flies the US flag to this day. In fact, I saw more US flags during that two weeks in Europe than in any two weeks I've spent in the US.
Inside the manor.
The guy on the left is Charles de Vallavielle. He owns Brecourt Manor. The guy on the right is the mayor of Sainte-Marie-du-Mont. Charles' father (who was wounded at age 10 during the assault on the manor) used to be the mayor.
Tracy signing her name in the town's registry of citizens.
Another view of the church where John Steele got hung up.
Bill shows us exactly where he landed.
Trey is being rusty.
I've always had a soft spot in my heart for unimogs.
I like the name of this self-propelled howitzer.
I'm standing next to Jean-Pierre's jeep outside Cave Nuts.
Bill at the Easy memorial. He was taking that pretty hard, I think.
Me on the M10. yeah, so I got up on it twice. How often do you get to climb on one? I was pissed to note that they had welded a plate over the open top of the turret.
Shawn and the tank destroyer.
Babe looks like he's jitterbugging in the Bois Jaques.
The little road leading out of the Bois Jaques. I got the impression that Wild Bill really didn't like being here too much. It was a little eerie literally standing on ground where men had died. In fact, I felt weird going into foxholes, much in the way some people feel about walking on a grave.
This was Babe's foxhole for a while.
Another view of the Normandy Cemetary.
Shawn at Nijmegen. Note his very orange shirt.
Me on an M4 Sherman. I've always liked Shermans, even though they were pretty crappy tanks (though I guess one could argue that they were crappy mostly because they weren't designed to counter armor, yet were forced into that role).
"Hmmm, a chill you say? I think I have some underpants in this musette bag somewhere...."
Babe and I had a long conversation at this bridge. I should have taped it, though I felt weird sticking a camera in people's faces. The gist was that this was the bridge Easy was sent to secure. They got about 20 yards from it and Boom! It blew up in their faces. Babe was a little farther back, and told me of a German 88 and MG42 machinegun in the town across the river. The only shell that 88 fired, he was proud to note, was one that landed near him. It blew out a bunch of windows and threw him a short distance. "I got shot at by the kraut gun, but it was only glass" he said. Though he had the glass all over him and needed a few days at the aid station to remove it all. The guy is packing the minerals, let me tell you. Run toward a bridge carrying a .30 cal machingun, staring down an 88? I'd have been weeping like a schoolgirl. To Babe, it wasn't nothing. By the way, if you ever watch A Bridge Too Far, this is the bridge that blows up in front of Elliot Gould.
The Rhodes Clan standing on The Bridge Too Close.
Lunch was silly. Hell, Holland was silly. The entire town of Eindhoven was silly...
I learn how to fold using the Dutch Method.
On our Bataan Laundry March through downtown Eindhoven, we stopped at a bank, thinking we could change dollars into Euros. "Hi, I'd like to excange some money?" "I'm sorry sir, this is not that kind of bank." "Uh, what kind of bank is it?" "We give loans and so forth, and don't change money. You'll need to go to the train station to exchange money." Of course! The friggin' train station was my second choice!
Do not order the fish and chips in Holland, even at a "British" pub. Unless you like lots of mayonnaise and really don't like vinegar, that is. Poor Patrick from Boston sitting on the right found that out the hard way.
Shawn near an artsy door in Eindhoven.
Like I said, Holland is silly. Even their TV.
The map at the Luxembourg American Cemetary. If you eveer wondered what was meant by the use of the word "bulge" in the phrase "Battle of the Bulge", look at this map. The German/Allies line runs north-south, along the Seigfried Line. Hitler, under the cover of night, brings his remaining forces right up to the Ardennes. On December 16th, four units break through the US lines, aiming to sieze St. Vith and Bastogne (for their road junctures), establish a stronghold, and move to Antwerp to seize the port there. The hope is this will cut the Allies in two. Bastogne is encircled, the Germans are stopped well short of Antwerp and US Airborne troops hold out until Patton's 4th Armored Division (the yellow arrows above) can "link up" with them from the south. The bulge created in the lines is where the term comes from.
I stil have tiny bruises on my knees from the small amount of leg room on the bus. Shawn even took a pic of exactly how much there was. When we got on the plane from Munich to London, the little 737 seats seemed like lazy boy recliners after 3,200km in those bus seats. We had one guy on the tour who is 6' 7". I'm not sure how he did it.
I hate the bus.
Here's a long view of that messed-up mural in Berchtesgaden.
Me outside a wood carver's shop.
The fireplace that Mussolini gave to Hitler in 1939. Note the damage done by GIs. I still think a fireplace is a weird gift. But, eh, fascist dictators... go figure.
I think I'm counting my change after using the restroom. Most had a old lady attendant, asking 30-50 cents to use the facilities. This is one of the few pictures I could find of our driver, Alain. He's the guy in sunglasses just over Tracy's shoulder. We though he looked a lot like Jean Reno.
I think this was in Zell-am-See. There was some kind of festival going on that day. Celebrating cheese or hay or whatever.
Wild Bill gave Tracy an angle pin from his hat.
More photos of tess making out with the goat-smelling hay man.
