This is the best Band of Brothers® Tour you can take. Our founder, Stephen E. Ambrose, wrote the book. We meticulously crafted the ORIGINAL Band of Brothers® Tour based on the recollections of the paratroopers themselves and the extensive research of Dr. Ambrose and the editors of Military History Quarterly and World War II magazines.
Anybody that has come along since then is just copying us.
For more information, read: Dick Winters and How the Band of Brothers® Tour Began >
About our Band of Brothers® Tour
Immortalized by the Stephen Ambrose bestseller, “Band of Brothers,” and brought to millions more in the epic Steven Spielberg/Tom Hanks HBO miniseries of the same name, the men of Easy Company were on an extraordinary journey during WWII. From D-Day to V-E Day, the paratroopers of E Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, participated in some of the war’s most critical battles and proved to truly be a company of heroes.
Our Band of Brothers® Tour follows the path of Easy Company from its training bases in Toccoa, Georgia, and England into combat in France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg and on to final victory at Berchtesgaden, Germany, Adolf Hitler’s Alpine retreat. You’ll stand in the very foxholes and precise locations where the men of Easy Company fought in some of the most climatic battles of World War II.
This tour is the ultimate Band of Brothers® Tour, an experience unparalleled in its accuracy and insight.
There will be some free time to relax, shop and do your own exploration in some of Europe’s most charming villages and cities, while evenings will be spent over delicious dinners where you can recount the day’s events with your fellow travelers as you, too, become a Band of Brothers.
The optional pre-tour extension is only offered a few times per year. It starts in Atlanta and includes a visit to Camp Toccoa at Mt. Currahee. Here, you will see Easy Company’s training grounds before returning to Atlanta. There is no group flight; Toccoa Extension guests must book their own trans-Atlantic flights. SAHT will instruct Toccoa Extension guests on a specific flight to purchase (ATL to LHR).
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Day-By-Day Itinerary
The Toccoa Extension starts one day before Day 1 of the tour.
Extension Pre-Tour Guests
Arrival in Atlanta.The tour begins in Atlanta with an informal Welcome Reception where participants will have an opportunity to get acquainted with each other and meet the historians and tour staff. A brief overview of the legacy of Easy Company will set the stage for the days ahead.
DAY 1 Tour Group: Flight to London; Extension Group: Arrival in Atlanta
Tour-only Guests: Take overnight flight to London Heathrow.Assuming your departure is from the USA, you should board your overnight flight to London Heathrow, landing on Day 2.
Pre-tour Extension Guests: Toccoa: Birthplace of the 506th.Ask any of the original members of Easy Company what made the unit so special and they will answer: “Toccoa.” This training ground in the north Georgia woods was where the bonding process of the 506th began. As it did for so many of the men of Easy Company, our tour of Toccoa will begin at the train station where recruits for the 506th first arrived. The station also houses the Stephens County Historical Society, the 506th Museum, and the unique collection of artifacts and memorabilia from Camp Toccoa.
Following lunch, we travel to the site of the Camp and then proceed up Mount Currahee, the 1,000-foot mountain the men of the 506th ran daily for training. Here they drew their inspiration and motto “Currahee,” an Indian word meaning “We Stand Alone.”
We end the day with a 4:30 p.m. or earlier airport dropoff. Guests book their own overnight flights to London Heathrow (LHR).
DAY 2 Arrival in London
All Guests: Arrive at London Heathrow.You will arrive in London this morning. Hotel accommodations will be provided at a Heathrow airport hotel. Standard check-in time is 3 p.m. The first tour activity will be a short 5 p.m. meet-up in the tour hotel’s conference room. Dinner is own your own, giving guests the option to take the tube to the city for an exciting night on the town, or have a relaxing dinner at the hotel restaurant.
DAY 3 England, Prelude to Invasion
Our morning starts with a visit to Littlecote House, the historic English manor that was headquarters for the 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment for the six months prior to the invasion. We will tour Aldbourne, the tiny Wiltshire village that was the home of Easy Company, and visit many of the buildings used by the men of Easy as they prepared for the greatest invasion in history. When in the village we will have an opportunity to enjoy a traditional lunch in the same pubs frequented by the men of the Easy Company.
DAY 4 Crossing the Channel
We begin our day in Portsmouth with a visit to the award-winning D-Day Museum and Southwick House, the elegant country house that became the location of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force. In the months leading up to D-Day, Southwick House became the headquarters of the main Allied commanders: Allied Supreme Commander, General Eisenhower; Naval Commander-in-Chief, Admiral Ramsay; and the Army Commander-in-Chief, General Montgomery. Large wall maps that were used in planning D-Day are still in place in the house, with markers showing the positions of the involved forces at the moments of the first landings. After our visit to Southwick House, we board the cross-channel ferry to France.
DAY 5 Fortress Europe
At the start of the invasion, several members of Easy Company landed in and around Ste-Mere- Eglise, including Richard Winters, Carwood Lipton, and Bill Guarnere. Here we begin our historical tracings of the 506th in France. This is where Dick Winters took command after the tragic death of Lt. Thomas Meehan. From Ste-Mere-Eglise we follow the route Lieutenant Winters and a handful of men took on the first night of the invasion to Brecourt Manor. In 1944, the manor was the site of a German battery that threatened the invasion beaches at Utah.
From the manor, we proceed to Utah Beach and the Utah Beach Museum. From Ste-Marie-du-Mont, we will travel past Dead Man's Corner, and into Carentan, the Norman town that was one of the Allies' earliest objectives. We will see the site of Easy Company's battle as they entered the town on June 12, and the square from which General Maxwell Taylor presented awards to his men for their gallant performance during the invasion.
DAY 6 Normandy Coast
Rising early the next morning, we will drive to Omaha Beach where the Americans took the German fortifications after a stupendous fight. The six-mile-wide invasion beach is surrounded by cliffs that made the landing and attack extremely difficult. Landings here were necessary in order to link with British landings to the east at Gold Beach with the American landing to the west at Utah Beach, thus providing a continuous foothold on the Normandy coast. Very little went as planned during the landing at Omaha Beach. Many landing crafts missed their targets throughout the day. German defenses were strong and inflicted heavy casualties on US troops. Losses were especially high in the first wave of landings; there were 2,400 casualties on Omaha Beach alone. We will study the battlefield and hear accounts of the action, cross the beach, analyze the maps and imagine the courage that saved our freedom that day.
Today the American Cemetery stretches along the bluff overlooking Omaha Beach. It covers 172 acres and contains the remains of American military dead, most of whom were killed during the invasion of Normandy and ensuing military operations in World War II. The names of the Americans who lost their lives in the conflict but could not be located and/or identified are inscribed on the walls of a semicircular garden at the east side of the memorial. We will spend some time at the cemetery to pay our respects. In the afternoon we will visit the bridge over the Caen Canal, today called Pegasus Bridge after the symbol of the British airborne forces. Pegasus Bridge, captured by a glider-borne company of the 6th Division British Airborne Troops, was the first engagement of D-Day, and the turning point of World War II.
DAY 7 Remember September
Today we will study Operation Market Garden, the largest airborne operation of the war. In broad daylight, the 101st Airborne Division parachuted into the Netherlands in a bold strike in order to seize bridges across rivers and adjacent canals from Belgium to Arnhem. From there we will head to Son, the location of the 506th’s drop zone and the bridge over Wilhelmina. Under the command of Colonel Sink, their mission was to capture the bridge over the Wilhelmina Canal and then advance south to Eindhoven. We will then follow the company's route into Eindhoven and visit Saint Catherine's church where many of the original liberators gathered in September 1944. Our last stop of the day will be the Veghel battle site, where all of the 101st Airborne Division fought to keep Hell's Highway clear of enemy troops.
DAY 8 Where They Stand
Our travels continue along Hells Highway, the route followed by the British XXX Corps as it attempted to reach its embattled 1st Airborne Division, in Arnhem. Our travels will also take us to the famous bridge over the Waal River that was a key objective of Operation Market Garden, the Bridge at Nijmegen. Following lunch at the De Westerbouwing restaurant, which in 1944 was a German observation position, we travel to the Island, a 5-kilometer strip of land between the Neder Rijm and the Waal and the northernmost point of Allied territory. While at the Island, we will visit the E Company positions during the month-long stalemate at the end of Operation Market Garden.
After a stop at Tor Schoonderlogt, a farm which was the 2nd Battalion Headquarters, we will visit Easy Company's jump-off point for Operation Pegasus, a mission to rescue trapped British paratroopers. We will walk the site of the fight at the Crossroads, where E Company attacked and destroyed a company of elite SS soldiers, preventing over 300 German soldiers from joining an attack on the 506th regimental headquarters. You will stand in the very spots where American and German forces stood, and will understand what Stephen Ambrose meant when he said that the best way to understand history is to study the places it was made.
DAY 9 Bastogne
Our next stop is Bastogne, Belgium, the site of the division's epic eight-day stand against the Germans in December 1944. Along the way, we stop at the American Battle Monuments Commissions Netherlands American Cemetery and Memorial at Margraten to pay our respects at the graves of Easy Company men killed in the Netherlands and Belgium. In Bastogne, we visit the Battle of the Bulge Museum and General Anthony McAuliffe's headquarters during the siege.
DAY 10 The Bois Jacques and Beyond
Saturday starts with a visit to the Bois Jacques, Halt Station, and Easy Company's foxholes overlooking the village of Foy. From Foy we will follow the company's route through Recogne, stopping to visit the German cemetery, Cobru, Noville, and Luzory. We conclude our day at the American Cemetery in Luxembourg, where General George S. Patton is buried with members of his 3rd Army.
DAY 11 The Last Patrol
From Bastogne, we head to Fort Simserhof, a beautifully preserved Maginot Line fortification, and a visit to the Muse de la Fortification du Simserhof. Our day concludes with a visit to Hagenau, the site of some of Easy Company's final battles and several daring patrols.
DAY 12 Why We Fight
On April 29, 1945, as they advanced into the Bavarian Alps, Easy Company liberated a satellite of the Dachau concentration camp at Landsberg. We will visit Dachau, the site of some of the most nefarious acts of and against humankind during the war, as we travel south through Bavaria. Constructed in a disused gunpowder factory, Dachau was the first concentration-style camp after which all subsequent concentration camps were modeled. In total, over 200,000 prisoners from more than 30 countries were housed in Dachau, with at least 30,000 registered prisoners are believed to have died in the camp and its subcamps: notably Jews, resistance fighters, clergymen, politicians, communists, writers, artists, and royalty. The second camp liberated by British or American forces, Dachau was one of the first places where the west was exposed to Nazi brutality.
DAY 13 The Eagle’s Nest
Our study of Easy Company battlefields ends at Adolf Hitler's Alpine retreat at Berchtesgaden, where we will visit the Eagles Nest and the remains of the vast Nazi Party complex liberated by Easy Company in May 1945. Eagles Nest was built as a 50th birthday present to Hitler from the Nazi party. Perched at 6017 feet, the Eagle's Nest and the road network leading to it were considered feats of engineering as they were completed in only 13 months' time in 1937-38.
DAY 14 Points
As it did for the men of Easy Company, our travels will end at Zell am See and Kaprun, Austria, where they celebrated the anniversary of their jump into Normandy with a parachute drop into the waters of the Zeller See Lake. In the evening we will have a final special banquet, where we can reflect on our trip and the Band of Brothers®' role in securing victory in Europe.
DAY 15 Going Home
Drop off at Munich Airport.
