Posts in Tag: France
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Cabaret Rouge Cemetery – How to Stay Sane While Visiting
Liberation Tour 2015 started the day with a visit to the Vimy Ridge Monument after which we visited the trenches and tunnels of the battlefield. Despite the cool damp weather, I think most people felt pretty good about visiting the monument and learning about Canada’s most famous WWI battle. From here we got on the […]
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Vimy Ridge – Why All Canadians Must Visit at Least Once
Liberation Tour 2015 has now completed two of the most important segments of the journey – the WWII sites at Normandy and the WWI sites at The Somme. On our last stop we visited the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing which frankly was shattering as we struggled to comprehend the enormity of the casualties suffered […]
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Thiepval -The Memorial to the Missing Will Leave You Shattered
After visiting Thiepval woods where modern archaeological techniques are being used to uncover stories from the Battle of the Somme, Liberation Tour 2015 continued our journey at Courcelette. It was the site of a major battle in the campaign where Canadians played a pivotal role in one of the very few successes of the summer […]
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Battle of the Somme – Two Stories out of the Million Who Died
After a very emotional morning at Beaumont Hamel, Liberation Tour 2015 moved a short distance away to the Ulster Memorial Tower which commemorates the more than 1,850 Ulstermen who died on July 1, 1916 the first day of the Battle of The Somme. It’s a handsome building which is a replica of Helen’s Tower, a well known […]
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Lochnagar Crater – Reliving WWI with Liberation Tour 2015
In the last post, our group took a pause from visiting war related sites and were over awed by the splendour of Amiens Cathedral, considered by many to be the exemplar of the Gothic architectural style. Liberation Tour 2015 has now arrived in The Somme district of France and for the next few days we […]
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The Dieppe Operation Part II – Visiting the Sites at Puys and Pourville
In the last post I described the planning and failure of the Dieppe Raid from the perspective of the assault on the beach that fronts the small city of Dieppe. If that were the only attack on Dieppe then it might fairly be called a raid, but in fact the there were attempted landings at […]
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The Dieppe Raid- A Canadian Tragedy – Understanding What Went Wrong
In the last post we visited the site of Abbeye d’Ardenne which was the scene of a particularly despicable war crime, the execution of Nova Scotian prisoners of war under the orders of Kurt Meyer. We are now headed to the scene of what some also consider a war crime, but one perpetrated by our […]
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Arromanches and Port Winston Churchill-A Quick Visit
One of the most vivid memories I have of my first visit to Europe and the D-Day sites in Normandy over fifty years ago was the artificial harbour constructed at Arromanches on the Gold Beach sector of the Allied landings on D-Day. Despite visiting some nineteen years after the event the harbour was choked with partially […]
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Omaha Beach – Making the Most Out of a Visit to this Hallowed Ground
After visiting the U.S. Ranger monument at Pointe du Hoc, Liberation Tour 2015 headed to Omaha Beach, the scene of the largest Allied landing on D-Day and the fiercest fighting. While estimates vary, it seems certain that at least 2,000 young Americans died on the five mile stretch of beach that will forever remain the […]