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The specialists in academic tours of:
 • All of Normandy 1944 and St Valery 1940
• Calais, Boulogne and the retreat to Dunkirk 1940. Dieppe and Bruneval 1942
• The Ardennes winter 1944 ( The Bulge) and May 1940, The Fall of France, Sedan 1940
• The Somme,1916. Vimy Ridge, Ypres 1915-1917, Verdun and the Americans in the Argonne 1918
• The Canadians along the North Coast to Antwerp
• Market Garden 1944 incl Nijmegen, Arnhem-Oosterbeek and Eindhoven
• Patton in Alsace-Lorraine to the Eagles Nest. The Franco Prussian War
• Rommel, the last act 1944. Berlin 1939-1945
• Crete 1941. The Tunisian Campaign 1943
• All of Italy 1943 - 1945 incl Salerno, Monte Cassino, Anzio, The Gothic Line
• A look at SOE
• Fall of Constantinople 1453
The battlefields of Europe and N Africa, where we take our tours, are still much the same as they were in the 1940s when the fighting took place. Now these battlefields are marked by stark but beautiful, carefully-tended cemeteries where servicemen and women, at the time, were laid to rest in peace.
To understand and to describe these battles requires the background and knowledge of academic, career soldiers who have seen active service as a participants and as staff officers.
We may be tour leaders, because we are in charge of the tour, but more important we are definitely not guides, although some of what we do is guiding – because, being academics and writers, the nature of the information we supply is significantly different from that which tour guides usually supply.
We are a team of senior soldiers who, between them, have been to Oxford University and have taught war studies at the Staff College and at Oxford. We have also lived in Northern France, the Fertile Crescent and in parts of the Mediterranean and know the countryside between Normandy, Berlin, the Low Countries, all of Italy, Crete and North Africa very well: we have walked over this area many times.
We can bring the past actions, campaigns to life, and we can comment, from a practical and academic point of view, on all the interpretations of recent and rather older accounts that you may have heard or studied.
And at the end of the day we can take you to the cultural sites and places for a really good dinner in places frequented by the locals.
In short we will all not only look but see, we will all not only learn but understand and we will not merely enjoy our day together but we will be moved, thrilled and enlightened, cry at times and often laugh.
So walk with us through the countryside and see the battlefields in all their detail, serious and light-hearted.
Our days are designed for people like you with an intellectual curiosity and an interest in seeing the history of Europe and N Africa. The small groups remain the most important part of our business - where discussion and a frank exchange of views and ideas are an integral part of the experience of being with us on tour.
NEPTUNE - The Sea Routes
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Veterans - Near Falaise Normandy
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click on the photographs to view larger images
Our parent organisation specialises in medium size groups of 15 - 20 persons which become the sort of tour that academics and professional people want to enjoy together.
The company has also set up larger groups on demand which are very popular in the USA with the benefit of cheaper group air-fares.
Over the last fourteen years WarHistory1944 has taken on tour many alumni groups and groups from parts of the NATO armies in Europe including students from the Staff Colleges, officer cadet schools and battalions.
We specialise in groups from 1 - 6 people and seem to attract not only the serving and retired but also the enthusiast, all of whom wish to understand in depth the reality of the conflicts which engulfed the world in the middle of the 20th Century.
One real attraction for both parts of the company is the ability of the client to choose his own, convenient date - we run our tours for 361 days a year!
Morphine Pack
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TNT Explosive Pack
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click on the photographs to view larger images
The organisation www.normandybattlefields.com is run by a McGill University PhD well known not only for his detailed, very well researched book Stand where they fought ( You can purchase this book, the best and most detailed overview on the market, from thepbiinc@aol.com ) but also for his lectures all over the USA. He is also one of the world's experts on the Turin Shroud. His junior colleague was a professional soldier, a Guardsman, ex Exeter and Oxford Universities and a former Military Assistant ( MA ) to the Prime Minister. He was also MA to the C in C Northern Army Group in Europe.
Naturally we are proud of our last-season recommendations, two of which are below :
"A Londoner, whose Father was killed in Normandy four miles inland said last year that ".....the tour was amazingly enjoyable and intellectually rigourous.." which is maybe what we set out to achieve."
"My West Point class mates and I had the pleasure of being led around Normandy by Nick Kennedy - we could not have been more pleased with our four day tour thanks to Nicks professionalism - educational, insightful, sometimes sad and at other times humourous which greatly enhanced our understanding of the history of the invasion."
POLISH WAR MEMORIAL OVERLOOKING MONTE CASSINO
How to Contact Us and Costs
We have left to the end this most vital topic. The administration for every tour is different because of the varying types of transport and hotels etc.
In general, according to the number of people, we charge a fee of 395 EUROS per day - any other charges for transport and meals/ accomodation are by arrangement during the planning stage.
We will help you all we can to whichever battlesite you chose to visit and are always delighted to work in conjunction with your Travel Agent.
You may be able to get us by telephone +44 (0) 1295 680 018 or by e mail direct objwarman@aol.com. If you get no reply within say two days do please send-again - AOL is sometimes not quite totally reliable IF we are in say N Africa or touring on the Mediterranean shores!
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