My Recent Trip to Arnhem, the Bulge and Wesel, Germany

Hi all--

In November my father and I made a trip to Europe (we live in Minnesota) to see some of the battle sites where the 17th Airborne was engaged during the war. I've been meaning to write this up and share it since I got back but I haven't had the time. Since today is the anniversary of the 17th's baptism of fire on "Dead Man's Ridge" outside Mande-St. Etienne and Flamierge, Belgium, I figure it's a good time to post this.

I have a friend who lives outside Arnhem who has a great "battlefield tours" business who agreed to show us the sites, so my dad and I flew to Amsterdam, took the train to Arnhem and met him there. We stayed at his house for much of our trip, which was a great "staging point" from which to make our daily trips out to the locations we wanted to see.

We started off in and around Arnhem and Nijmegen, looking at Operation Market Garden sites. Market Garden has long been of particular interest to both me and my dad, so it was great to see things like the Arnhem Bridge, The Island, an awesome collection of glider artifacts in Wolfheze, and Museum Hartenstein (Roy Urquart's HQ) in Oosterbeek.

We took a two-day trip to Bastogne and its environs from there, to see the places where the 17th saw action during the Battle of the Bulge. Highlights included the 101st Airborne Museum in Bastogne (where we got a private tour, including their basement storage rooms), the Bois Jacques (of Band of Brothers fame) outside Foy, the huge Mardasson Memorial, our walk along Dead Man's Ridge (where we found shrapnel and live ordinance, including 60mm mortar rounds), and the Church of St. Ode in Houmont that contains a nice 17th Airborne memorial stained glass window.

From there we went to the areas in and around Wesel, Germany to see where the 17th landed during Operation Varsity. We saw some great things like the Hotel Duden (the site of the 194th regimental HQ), Burp Gun Corner, the farm where 17th trooper Stuart Stryker earned the Medal of Honor, and the 680th LZ just east of Blumenkamp.

It was a great trip--I took over a thousand pictures, made copious notes and gave a nice little presentation to my family when we got home.

A selection of some of my better pictures is online here. Please forgive me, I'm definitely no photographer and I was using my phone, but you get the idea.

Just thought I'd share this with you. If anyone would find it interesting, I'm hoping it's the good folks here at ww2f.

Let me know what you think!

Adam

 

Had a quick look at your pics, rather alot to view at the moment, will have a look at them another time.
Thanks for posting the report & link to pics.

 

Good work, very interesting trip you made!

 

Thanks for sharing the photos, Adam.