Paratroopers hooked up inside a C-47, frozen in bronze on the National WWII Memorial in Washington DC. As a battlefield guide, I spend most of my time at actual drop zones and landing sites in Europe. Panels like this one compress the chaos of an airborne operation into a clean, composed image.

The fragment of the original abbey of Monte Cassino stonework below the steps is easy to miss. The hills beyond it are not. From this height, the entire Liri Valley is visible, including every route the Allies needed to advance toward Rome.

This memorial in Normandy marks where Easy Company, 506th PIR, lost its commanding officer before a single man could jump. A couple of fields away, C-47 chalk 66, carrying Lieutenant Thomas Meehan III and his entire headquarters section, was hit by flak and clipped a hedgerow at 01:12 on 6 June 1944

A residential garden fence in Oosterbeek, peppered with bullet and shrapnel damage from September 1944. The 1st Airborne Division's shrinking perimeter ran through these streets during the last days of Market Garden.

The Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen. Only the towers remain. On 7 March 1945, troops from the 9th Armored Division reached the Rhine here and found it still standing. Every other bridge had been destroyed.

The memorial on top of the Seelow Heights on the approaches to Berlin was built by the victors, which means it tells one version of what happened here in April 1945.

A battered Achilles tank destroyer stands in La Roche-en-Ardenne, marking the 51st Highland Division's involvement in the Bulge counteroffensive. The Division had been fighting in the Netherlands when it was redirected south in late December 1944 to contain the German salient's western edge.

The same doorway, decades apart. A composite image merges past and present at Fondation J.P. Pescatore in Luxembourg City, showing General Patton striding into what served as his Third Army headquarters during the Battle of the Bulge.

The Robert Cole monument near Best, visited today leading a battlefield tour along Hell's Highway section of Operation Market Garden. Cole was one of the 101st Airborne's most distinguished officers, having earned the Medal of Honor at Carentan for leading a bayonet charge across an exposed causeway

A German 88mm Pak 43 on a roadside near Clervaux, Luxembourg. Not captured in battle, just abandoned. In early 1945, as the Wehrmacht withdrew through the Ardennes, weapons like this were left behind by the dozen.

This beautiful house in Hagenau served as Observation Post 2 for Easy Company, in Feb 1945. The 101st Airborne had just come off the line at Bastogne, expecting some well-earned rest at Mourmelon. Instead they were trucked to Alsace, where Operation Nordwind had stretched Allied defences thin.

This giant hole is actually a crater of one of the biggest mine explosions of the First World War. The crater measures 100 metres wide and 21 metres deep and sits in a field near La Boisselle in France. It was not made by a shell but by a massive mine explosion.

A C-47 crashed in the early hours of 6 June 1944 near Picauville, killing all four crew and sixteen paratroopers aboard. The engine was recovered and now forms part of the village memorial. It was not the only aircraft lost here.

These broken walls near Bettendorf, Luxembourg are what remain of the advanced command post of "I" Company, 109th Infantry Regiment. In December 1944 the Niederberghof farmhouse sat 500 metres behind the American line, under the command of Captain Bruce Paul.

This monument in Linden marks where a C-47 called "Satan's Fate" came down on 17 September 1944. At 13:30, German flak set the left engine on fire minutes from the drop zone. Pilot J.O. Martin held course. Thirteen of fourteen paratroopers made it out.

This is the lookout from where Marshal Zhukov observed the battle he was certain would fall quickly. It did not. On 16 April 1945, his 1st Belorussian Front crossed the Oder and ran into German defensive lines built into the Seelow Heights over months of preparation.

This unassuming bench in Bury St Edmunds is actually made out of the wing of a B-17 bomber. It sits in the John Appleby Rose Garden in the Abbey Gardens, a memorial to the Americans of the Mighty Eighth who died flying from Suffolk's airfields.

One of the really cool things to visit, Camp Toccoa where the men of Easy Company (and many others) trained for the invasion of Europe. It's located next to mount Currahee so you visit both in one day. Try and visit the town and the museum during the Military Weekend in early October!

The scale of the Éperlecques bunker only registers when you spot a tiny me standing in front of it. A V-1 and V-2 are displayed nearby, dwarfed by the structure designed to store and launch them.

This is the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme. On it are listed the names of 72,000 soldiers. None of them have a known grave. So many names required so much wall space that Lutyens designed the structure as interlocking arches, creating 48 internal panels to hold them all.

These are the last standing guards barracks of Stalag VII-A, Moosburg. Stalag VII-A was the largest prisoner of war camp on German soil. By April 1945 it held somewhere between 80,000 and 130,000 men, depending on which source you trust.

The preserved M3 half-track memorial at the bridge across the Amblève in Stavelot. That bridge is why this town appears in every account of the Ardennes offensive.

Then and now in the Bulge. I took this picture two days ago in Stavelot, Belgium, on a battlefield tour, at the location where Tiger 222 was knocked out on 19 December 1944. This Tiger belonged to the 2nd Company of schwere SS-Panzer-Abteilung 501, part of Kampfgruppe Peiper.

The king Tiger at La Gleize, always a favourite of my guests. Today we are exploring the Battle of the Bulge, with the focus on Kampfgruppe Peiper. This was one of his Tiger II tanks that was saved from the scrap man by a bottle of cognac!

You are looking at restored foxholes in the woods near LZ-L. We visited them today on a half day tour focused on the 4th Parachute Brigade and its actions on 18 to 20 Sept 1944 during Market Garden. On the 19th, Brigadier Hackett and his staff worked from here as the situation around Arnhem worsened

This plaque marks the spot where the first American was killed in combat on German soil. On 12 September 1944, tanks of the 33rd Armored Regiment, 3rd Armored Division, pushed through the outskirts of Roetgen toward the West Wall.

This is Joe's Bridge at Lommel near the Dutch / Belgian border. After its capture by the Irish Guards on 10 September 1944, it became the start point for Market Garden. On 17 September, Guards Armoured Division headed north from here, first objective was Eindhoven and then on to Arnhem.

The 1st Airborne memorial in Arnhem stands at the foot of the John Frost Bridge, set in a sunken bicycle roundabout locals call the bears pit. Each year, on the Friday of the commemorative weekend, a remembrance ceremony is held here.

The BBMF Lancaster is impressive in the air. It is something else entirely when you stand beneath it inside the hangar at RAF Coningsby. I visited in January 2024 and saw it under maintenance, stripped back, practical, approachable (within limits).

Nineteen stainless steel soldiers advance through low juniper at the Korean War Veterans Memorial in Washington DC. Ponchos hang heavy, rifles at the ready. Each face is fixed in concentration, as if the next step might draw fire.

This is a Belgian Gate, a portable anti-tank obstacle first designed in 1933 and later reused by the Germans along the Atlantic Wall. Thousands were placed on beaches to tear open landing craft and block vehicles at low tide. Simple, cheap, and brutally effective. Most were cleared after 1944.

Standing at one of the gun positions at Brecourt Manor is Rick Gomez, who portrayed George Luz in the HBO series Band of Brothers. The photo was taken in 2014 during the cast reunion marking the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings.

The Tommy statue stands on Hill 112, just outside Caen in Normandy. This unassuming ridge became one of the key objectives of the 1944 campaign and one of its hardest fights. Over ten weeks, the 11th Armoured, 15th Scottish, 43rd Wessex and 53rd Welsh Divisions all attacked and counterattacked here

Canadian-built M4A1 Sherman, known as the Grizzly. Only 188 were produced, making this a rare survivor. This one stands outside the Vrijheidsmuseum in Groesbeek in the colours of the Sherwood Rangers, who fought in this area in 1944.

This enormous 305mm Spanish coastal gun once covered the entire entrance to Barcelona’s port. Built in the 1890s, it could hurl a 275-kg shell nearly 10 kilometres out to sea. Only four were ever made, yet they remained in service for decades.

Uncle Beach in Vlissingen marks where British commandos went ashore during Operation Infatuate to open the approaches to Antwerp harbour. Unlike Normandy, this was a late-war amphibious assault, carried out in poor weather against prepared German defences.

Near this tree, nine men were killed in seconds in August 1940, and the tree still shows the scars. The men were members of the Essex Regiment, sheltering nearby while guarding North Weald aerodrome during a German air raid on 24 August 1940.

The view from inside a restored First World War German trench at the Passchendaele Museum. The museum focuses on the Third Battle of Ypres, fought from 31 July to 10 November 1917, one of the costliest battles of the war.

This is the 1st Airborne Division evacuation memorial on the south bank of the Rhine at Oosterbeek. From here, on the night of 25-26 September 1944, the last remaining British and Polish airborne troops were ferried across under cover of darkness. This marked the end of the Arnhem operation.

This German Gun Bunker was built to defend fortress IJmuiden. IJmuiden was not just another stretch of coastline. In January 1944 it was formally designated a fortress, a status reserved for places considered vital to the German war effort. That decision influenced everything in the area.

This Panzer IV stood outside the Normandy Victory Museum in 2019. By the summer of 44, the design had reached its limits. Once the backbone of German armoured forces, the Panzer IV was still a dangerous adversary, but no longer dominant as Allied tanks surpassed it in armour, firepower, and mobility

This may be the most overlooked Market Garden memorial. A beautiful eagle draped in a parachute marks the 101st Airborne drop zone near Son. It stands at the A50 service area between Sint-Oedenrode and Son en Breugel.

This is the Feldherrnhalle in Munich. In November 1923, this is where the Beer Hall Putsch ended in gunfire and collapse. Sixteen Nazis and four Bavarian policemen were killed here within minutes. Adolf Hitler fled the scene, was arrested days later, and sentenced to prison.

Here, at the Bendlerblock in Berlin, Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg and a number of his fellow conspirators were executed only hours after their attempt to assassinate Hitler failed on 20 July 1944.

Dragon’s teeth of the Siegfried Line on the outskirts of the Hürtgen Forest. Parked in a gap in the line is an original WWII Dodge WC54 ambulance. I took this photo in 2007 during my first visit to the forest. We went in with several WWII vehicles, an experience that has stayed with me.

This is the bunker near Cheneux where Jochen Peiper took shelter during an Allied air raid in December 1944. On the 4th day of the Battle of the Bulge, Peiper and his Kampfgruppe were trying to reach the Meuse River. After the bridges at Trois-Ponts were destroyed, he was forced onto a long detour.

A British WWI machine-gun bunker deep in Ploegsteert Wood, known to British troops as Plugstreet Wood. After heavy fighting in late 1914 and early 1915, this sector of the Ypres Salient became relatively quiet. By 1916 it was used to rest and retrain units after tougher fighting elsewhere.

The church in Angoville-au-Plain. During D-Day and the following days, this small church was used as an aid station by U.S. medics Kenneth Moore and Robert Wright, 101st Airborne. Wounded from both sides were treated here. The bloodstains on the pews remain as a reminder of what took place inside.

The striking Dambusters Memorial in Woodhall Spa. Near here, in May 1943, Lancasters of 617 Sqdn set out with bouncing bombs to breach the Möhne and Eder dams. The weapon worked, but at a heavy price. Eight of 19 aircraft did not return with 53 Allied airmen killed. Many more died in the flooding.

This is the real building in Rachamps where the men of Easy Company spent the night before being pulled off the line near Bastogne. In Band of Brothers, the location is shown as a monastery. In reality, it was a convent, and the building is still in use today as a school.