Earle Fries
presents
Including
the Normandy Beaches of France to Berlin, Germany.
June 30-July 11, 2009
|
Our tour leader, Earle Fries, was a WW2 Army Air Forces pilot
(not in Europe). After leaving service he went on to college
where he became a Christian. He attended Bible school in
Chicago and Toronto. His education, as well as his teaching,
has been in history, Bible and related subjects. He was founder
and President of the California Center for Biblical Studies,
developed the School of World Missions for International Teams,
pastored Spring Mountain Bible Church in Oregon and is currently
retired and living in northern California. He and his wife,
Julie, have traveled to approximately 70 countries around the
world and have led numerous tour groups to the Middle East and
Europe.
Daily devotions will focus on the Christian and spiritual
warfare. |
Escorted by:
Earle
Fries
|
Day 1: Departure for Paris (June 30)
Prepare yourself for a life-changing experience as today we
embark on our Journey to Europe. We have meal services in flight on
our way to Paris, France.
Day 2: Arrive Paris,
Caen (July 1)
Arriving in Paris we meet our guide who assists us to our motorcoach.
We immediately head out of the city and north towards the Normandy
Coast. En-route to Caen we stop at the Memorial Pour La Paix. This
museum houses exhibits relating from WWII to present day. We arrive
at our hotel where we have dinner and overnight the next three
nights in Caen.
Day 3: Normandy American Beaches,
Ste. Mere Eglise (July 2)
This morning we depart to the D-Day landing beaches including Omaha
and Utah Beaches. Our first stop will be at the American Cemetery
overlooking the eastern end of Omaha Beach. We will take this time
to pay our respects to the deceased at the hundreds of crosses and
stars of David. Entrance to the Peace Memorial is included. We begin
our in-depth tour of the area battlefields by stopping at Pointe Du
Hoc, a sheer cliff some forty meters high. It is here that the US
Army Rangers stormed cliffs with collapsible ladders and grappling
hooks to get onto Omaha Beach. Omaha Beach was a site where very
little went according to plan. Unexpectedly strong defenses led to
heavy U.S. casualties in the first waves of landings. Then see the
Dog Green sector of Omaha Beach, made famous by the movie “Saving
Private Ryan.” Losses were especially high here. We will study the
battlefields; cross the beaches, analyze the maps and imagine the
courage that saved our freedom that day. Our final visit of the day
is to Ste. Mere Eglise taken by the American Airborne on D-Day. The
town was made famous by the paratrooper John Steel and by the film
"The Longest Day". John Steel managed to land on the church and his
chute caught on the steeple. He hung there while the fighting
continued on the ground for two hours before being cut down by the
Germans, taken prisoner and later released by the Americans. We will
also stop at the Paratrooper Museum housing many interesting
artifacts including a DC3 aircraft used on D-day together with a
glider. We return to the hotel for dinner and overnight.
Day 4: British & Canadian Beaches (July 3)
After breakfast at the hotel, our tour begins where the first
shots were fired, at the crucial Pegasus Bridge. We continue on the
way to the guns at Longues-sur-Mer, the battery against which HMS
Ajax scored perhaps the most accurate (and perhaps the luckiest) hit
of the war. We'll see the evidence that remains. On Gold Beach we
will see what remains of Port Winston where allied troops unloaded
supplies during the invasion of June 6, 1944. A score of landing
ships struck mines and suffered damage of various degrees.
Specialist teams of underwater demolition experts were forced to
struggle through the water while disabling mines and blowing the
other obstacles, all under heavy sniper fire from the remaining
German defenders. At the same time, the British were also landing at
Sword beach. As part of the defenses, the Germans had set up mine
fields, concrete sea walls and anti-tank ditches. By the end of the
day nearly 30,000 allied troops had landed at Sword Beach. Juno, the
landing beach for Canadian forces, was the second most heavily
defended of the five landing sites chosen. The seawall was twice the
height of Omaha Beach's, and the sea was also heavily mined. This
afternoon we’ll view the Bridge at Troarn, the D-Day objective of
the 3rd Parachute Squadron, Royal Engineers. We return to Caen for
dinner and overnight.
Day 5: Compiegne (Railroad Car), Reims
(July 4)
Woodrow Wilson called World War I “The war to end all wars.”
Although hindsight is always 20-20, this prediction was wildly
wrong. In one of the ironies of history, our troops in eastern
France in 1944-45 retraced some of the same battlefields where
American “doughboys” fought in 1918. When Adolf Hitler received word
from the French Government that they wished to negotiate an
armistice, Hitler selected Compiègne Forest near Compiègne as the
site for the negotiations. As Compiègne was the site of the 1918
Armistice ending the Great War with a humiliating defeat for
Germany, Hitler saw using this location as a supreme moment of
revenge for Germany over France. In the very same railway carriage,
Hitler sat in the same chair that Marshal Ferdinand Foch had sat in
when he faced the defeated German representatives. We continue on to
Reims for the evening and a tour of the Cathedral, made famous by
the damage done during World War I. Time Permitting; we also visit
the MUMS champagne facility.
Day 6: Belleau Wood, Argonne Forest,
Verdun, Luxembourg (July 5)
We’ll visit Chateau Thierry (Belleau Wood Battlefield), where U.S.
Army and Marine Corps troops helped to stop the German advance from
reaching Paris. In the Meuse-Argonne Region, we’ll see the
Pennsylvania State Monument and the American Memorial at Montfaucon.
It was in the Argonne Forest that Sergeant Alvin York showed his
extraordinary courage and marksmanship, and the “Lost Battalion,”
led by a Wall Street lawyer called up from the reserves, was
surrounded by the Germans for five days, refusing to give up. World
War I on the Western Front was largely trench warfare - a four year
stalemate where millions of soldiers were killed or wounded.
Although American troops were not involved, we will also visit
Verdun. The Battle of Verdun, lasting from February to December
1916, was the longest and largest single battle in world history. In
planning for the Second World War, senior generals on both sides
were determined to avoid the futile slaughter of trench warfare. Our
lodging for the next two nights will be in Luxembourg.
Day 7: Battle of Bulge, Maginot Line (July
6)
The Battle of the Bulge, as the Ardennes Campaign is widely known,
was the largest land battle of World War II. It was also the largest
battle ever fought by the American Army. This last offensive of the
German Army cost 19,000 Americans killed in action. But our troops
held the line and the offensive was a disaster for the Germans, who
had put their soldiers in a noose to be cut off by reinforcing
Americans under General Patton. We’ll visit Bastogne, where our
soldiers were surrounded for a week, and see the town’s monuments to
this epic battle. When the Germans sent a delegation to accept the
surrender of U.S. troops in the Bastogne region, General McAuliffe
responded with what became the most widely quoted comment of the war
in Europe –“NUTS!”
We continue our sightseeing along the Maginot Line, a series of
permanent fortifications built to protect France’s borders with
Germany and Italy. A stop will be included to view the major fort at
Hackenberg, the largest of the Maginot Line fortresses with 17
combat blocks. Tours of the fortress include the main munitions
storage area, engine room, barracks, and kitchen; a museum of Maginot
Line uniforms and weapons; an electric train ride to one of the
artillery combat blocks (block 9), and a visit inside and outside
of block 9 to see how a 135mm howitzer turret operates. We return to
Luxembourg for dinner and overnight.
Day 8: Romantic Road, Rothenberg, Wurzburg
(July 7)
This afternoon we stop along the panoramic "Romantic Road" to
visit the best preserved medieval town in all of Europe, Rothenburg.
We include the quaint Rathaus (town hall) with its tower, the
Kriminal-museum, housing all manner of Medieval instruments of
torture and, especially for the ladies, one of the most fascinating
Christmas stores you will ever see - Kathe's (pronounced Katie's).
After free time, our trek north through the fertile countryside
brings us to Wurzburg for dinner and overnight.
Day 9: Buchenwald Concentration Camp,
Berlin (July 8)
We travel northward through the German countryside and stop for a
tour of Buchenwald Concentration Camp. Buchenwald remained one of
the major camps throughout the history of the Third Reich, with
numerous sub camps under its administration. The camp was liberated
by the U.S. Army on 11 April 1945. The American soldiers found that
the inmates had already taken the camp over, after most of the SS
guards fled, and were organizing its surrender. Buchenwald was one
of the first glimpses that Americans had of the horrors of the
concentration camp system. Our lodging for the next three nights
will be in Berlin.
Day 10: Berlin Tour, Pergamon Museum (July
9)
Berlin was the political, spiritual, and cultural center of the Nazi
regime. As Hitler said, “Who controls Berlin controls Prussia, and
who controls Prussia controls Germany.” Sightseeing this morning
includes the Wilhelmstrasse from Unter den Linden to
Niederkirchnerstrasse (Prince Albrecht Strasse during the Third
Reich.) These four blocks were the nerve center of Nazi rule -
including Hitler’s Chancellery and Bunker, Goebbels’ Propaganda
Ministry, Goering’s Luftwaffe Headquarters, (still standing today)
Ribbentrop’s Foreign Office, and Himmler’s Gestapo Headquarters. See
Potsdam Square, the Brandenburg Gate, and a remnant of the infamous
wall. See the Russian War Memorial, Alexander Square, and drive
along Unter den Linden, the main avenue of pre-war Berlin. See the
recently dedicated Holocaust Memorial near the Brandenburg Gate. Our
tour ends at the top of the Kurfurstendam (Ku’damm), dominated by
the bombed out shell of Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church and its new,
starkly modern replacement. These buildings have become symbols of
the Old and New Germany. They are among the most impressive sights
in Europe. We return to the hotel for dinner and overnight.
Day 11: Free Day Berlin (July 10)
Today is free. Transportation will be provided for those who
wish to visit the marvelous Pergamon Museum. The Pergamon houses
original-sized, reconstructed monumental buildings such as the
Pergamon Altar, the Market Gate of Miletus, and the Ishtar Gate of
ancient Babylon, all consisting of parts transported from the
original excavation sites. We have our final dinner and overnight in
Berlin.
Day 12: Home (July 11)
We have an early morning departure for the Berlin Airport for
our flight homeward allowing for arrival home by early afternoon.
