Hal Jespersen's D-Day Anniversary and Patton Tour, June 2019

This is my travelogue for the Stephen Ambrose Historical Tours event, “D-Day 75th - Patton’s 3rd Army Tour,” May 30–June 13, 2019. Since this is a very long report, I have broken it into three segments, as follows:

• England, May 29–June 2
• Normandy, June 3–8
• To Luxembourg and the Start of the Bulge, June 9–10
• Concluding the Bulge, to the Rhine, and Final Thoughts, June 11–13 (this page)

Tuesday, June 11 — Concluding the Battle of the Bulge

We drove to Diekirch, Luxembourg, to visit the military museum (Musée National d'Histoire Militaire) there. This is a superb museum, with thousands of items, large and small. There are many dioramas with authentic uniforms and equipment, and Kevin told us they usually interviewed each uniform owner to get his story and ensure the portrayal was accurate. They concentrate on Luxembourg, of course, in WWI, WWII, Korea, and with NATO, but the greatest emphasis is on WWII. They cover the 1940 German invasion, the occupation, the 1944–45 liberation, and a POW camp that a number of Luxembourgers suffered through. I photographed only a tiny percentage of their displays, but you can infer how many high quality artifacts are available.

We headed toward Bastogne and watched another Band of Brothers episode, “Foy.” We stopped at a crossroads just south of Assenois to describe Creighton Abrams’s drive from there into besieged Bastogne. There are small monuments to both WWI and WWII here. As we drove north, we got a blow-by-blow description of the action of the 6 US tanks and a halftrack. There is a bunker where the lead tank made contact with a 101st soldier, and we could see it, but not up close because of a road closure.

Next was Bastogne Barracks, a Belgian army compound where the 101st Airborne established its HQ. We saw the offices in which Brig. Gen. McAuliffe received the German surrender demand and replied “Nuts,” and there were recreations of the scenes of his office, the Ops room, and the signal center. Then we visited their Vehicle Exhibition Hall, where dozens of immaculately restored (and often operating) vehicles are on display. By this time, I had seen so many armored vehicles that my head was swimming, but I photographed a few highlights. We also saw the vehicle restoration shop, where men were rebuilding a Sherman tank and the engine was out to see.

At this point we lost the services of our outstanding bus driver, Koop, who I believe was done in by labor laws restricting how many consecutive days he could drive. His replacement, Bas, is also Dutch. We had lunch on our own in McAuliffe Square, a tourist town to the max. Then north through Bizory to visit Bois Jacques, overlooking the town of Foy, where volunteers have maintained some of the foxholes of E/506, as recreated in the TV show. There is a monument to the defenders of Bastogne, but sadly it has been vandalized; the photo below is an older one from Wikipedia. Then back to the hotel. The group dinner was in the hotel, but I skipped out with some friends to get pizza in a nearby Italian place, Il Fragolino, in the Grund. It was head and shoulders above the food quality of the previous Novotel dinner.

Wednesday, June 12 — To Germany

A rainy morning, the worst weather of the entire tour. We started off by distributing Stroopwafels, which Koop had procured for us based on a conversation I had with him a few days ago. (Kevin persisted in calling these "Dutch Crackers," but in fact they are delicious little caramel-filled waffles.) Then Bas drove us to the Hamm Military Cemetery, in a close suburb of Luxembourg City, which Kevin said holds the distinction of being the only one of the American European cemeteries that is in its original location. Patton’s staff bought the land at the start of the Bulge because the general knew a lot of casualties would be coming. There were four Ambrose buses in attendance and Kevin was chosen to preside over the big group. Steve Weiss told a story about driving from Paris to attend the funeral, but arriving the following day. He said he actually fell accidentally onto the grave, which at the time was among the men of the Third Army, but the general was later relocated to be at the head of his men’s formation. Kevin said that Bea Patton was offered the choice of burying her husband in the US, with Napoleon in Les Invalides, or with his men, and Bea did not hesitate deciding on the latter. The cemetery is beautiful, with impressive monuments and two large campaign maps. The big tower has a carillon that played America the Beautiful and A Grand Old Flag. I was expecting Boogie-Woogie Bugle Boy next, but it fell silent.

We drove a few hours, all the way north to Koblenz, and then back south to Bacharach on the Rhine, and watched the 1986 minor movie The Last Days of Patton. (I’m really surprised George C. Scott ever agreed to appear in this sentimental, but depressing, work.) It was a big surprise, but instead of a regular lunch, we got a riverboat cruise on the Rhine! The MS Goethe is a side wheel boat with lunch seating for a couple of hundred folks. The lunch itself was quite tasty and the wine list was very good. And miraculously, the weather broke and we got bright sunshine. We sailed from Bacharach to Rüdesheim, a bit more than two hours, and saw beautiful vineyards and some castles.

Scenes from our Rhine cruise:

The buses picked us up in Rüdesheim and we were off the Mannheim. The sad thing was that this surprise lunch event meant that our visit to the medieval city of Trier was bypassed. So we saw nothing of military significance in Germany. As we drove, there was yet another movie, Fury, about Brad Pitt and his Sherman Easy-8 tank crew in 1945. I have to say that the over reliance on bus videos is a minor reason for complaint about an otherwise good tour.

Well, sorry, here’s another: we drove more than an hour and a half to Mannheim to see where Patton’s car accident occurred. It’s a modern intersection that bears little relationship to the one in 1945. Kevin outlined some of the weird conspiracy theories about Eisenhower or the Russians assassinating Patton and also roasted Bill O’Reilly’s ghost-written book, Killing Patton. Then it was over an hour in the other direction to the hotel.

Our hotel for the last night is the Mercure Wiesbaden City. Dinner at Der Andechser Ratskeller a few blocks away, which featured some meat in gravy and a softball-sized meatball composed of bread, potatoes, and some mystery ingredients.

Thursday, June 13 — Flight Home and Final Thoughts

I took a taxi to the Frankfurt airport for my 9 am Lufthansa flight to LHR. This was another annoyance—they seemed to be building up as we neared the end. Ambrose includes an airport transfer, but their policy was explained to be that the bus has to leave early enough to accommodate the earliest flight of anyone in the group. Although most of us had flights in the 9–12 timeframe, one guy had 6:30 am, so the bus was scheduled at 4:30! I suggested that they send that one guy in a taxi and satisfy the majority, but no dice. Many of the folks I talked with booked the 65-euro taxi; Uber operates here supposedly, but the app said no cars were available. At Heathrow I had to get my bag and change terminals from #2 to #5—quite a journey, actually—for British Airways at 2:15 pm nonstop to SFO, arriving about 5 pm the same day.

Overall, I had a good time on this lengthy trip, and enjoyed interacting with a number of interesting, friendly folks. Kevin and Keith, always enthusiastic, did an excellent job on the history lectures and the logistics (other than this last-minute bus annoyance). Most of the hotels were decent to very good, and about 80% of the hosted meals were good. The D-Day ceremony was a lifetime memory that was worth the big investment in time. I saw more cool armored vehicles that I could have imagined. The Maginot Line fort and Rhine cruise were a bit off-topic, but very interesting.