You can also find audio guides that you can listen to in the car as you go from stop to stop. There are probably more battlefield markers at Gettysburg then there are at any other battlefield in the world. Before you go, visit the Virtual Gettysburg Web Site.
Many roads in the Ardennes are small and there are not many markers along the route. This map shows the advance of the 6th SS Panzer Army, commanded by Josef “Sepp” Dietrich. Bringing along a complement of “After the Battle” publications will enhance your trip 200%.
He wore this cap after his service in the Army when he attended numerous reunions.
The School for Advanced Military Studies (SAMS) was the most difficult academic school that I ever attended. Class ran from 7:30 a.m. to noon. The rest of the day and night was a reading assignment of 400-500 pages, often an entire book. The following morning, the seminar would discuss what they had read. SAMS began in the early-1980s; it was based on the demanding training that the Prussian and German General Staff officers received long ago.
Olga (left with large beer mug) at the Oktoberfest. Olga can make friends with anybody. Many were the times that she has taken the spouses on various excursions away from a battlefield visit. These side trips usually involved excellent food and out-of-the-way shopping opportunities. On the Fifth Field research trip to France in September 2012, she took the lead in numerous French villages and was so outgoing that at every stop, people were happy to help us find obscure crime scenes.
No, that’s not correct; Olga is my better 90%. Here, Captain MacLean is on an Army deployment as the Personnel Officer (S-1) for an engineer mission to build a road through the mountains in Honduras in 1986-1987. She has traveled all over the world, speaks several languages and is a real hoot, when visiting old battlefields. I have lost track of how many hidden German bunkers she found in the Hürtgen Forest, or a particular grave in a cemetery.
Martin Steglich (left), French (center) and Heinz-Georg Lemm (right.) Just listening to these two veterans of almost six years of combat in World War II was a historical experience all by itself. They knew everything about the infantry regiment, the backbone of the German Army. Both began the war as lieutenants and platoon leaders, and ended the war as Infantry regimental commanders.
I call this my “Senatorial Candidate Photo.” Little kids would appear out of nowhere in the desert, searching for food, although they always appeared well-fed. Olga would send large packages of small boxes of raisins to hand out.
“In his first novel, A Garden of Sand, Earl Thompson wrote of Depression-era Kansas in the 1930s. At one point in the story, he described the inside of a truck-stop, where a young man often fantasizes about doing something bigger with his life than his friends – being a part of something bigger than himself. Above the jukebox in the old café is an Anheuser-Busch Brewing Company print depicting Custer’s Last Stand, at which point Thompson’s story continues, describing the Americana masterpiece:
“It was a great picture with ponies wild-eyed and frothing in the dust of battle, ridden by howling Indians in warpaint, dropping, dragging, dying like flies, all over it. And Custer, his hair like golden flypapers, golden mustachios, great white hat, fringed buckskin jacket, supported dying troopers around his knees, his pearl-handled six-guns blazing, mowing down Indians as if they were wheat. That dusty golden land was of the world and the boy knew. He lived where Indians had walked. Where buffalo grazed. Listen! For the silent step. He could look at the picture for hours. Nuts to Western Union! When he grew up, he was going with the cavalry.””
First Lieutenant Cooke and Captain Thomas French of Company M were two of the best shots in the regiment.
