The cratered clifftop at Pointe du Hoc, Normandy — overlapping shell holes, grassed over but still deep.

10–18 September 2026 · France · Belgium · Luxembourg · Germany

Band of Brothers TourEurope, September 2026

9 days following Easy Company from Normandy to the Eagle’s Nest, September 10–18, 2026.

This trip has not happened yet. Every page here is the plan and the history behind it, written beforehand. The photographs are from an earlier tour of the same route in July 2023 — each entry gets rewritten after 18 September 2026.

Start the journey Read the journal

Nine days following Easy Company, from a Norman hedgerow to a mountaintop in Bavaria

In September 2026 I am joining the 9-day Band of Brothers Tour run by Beaches of Normandy Tours, tracing the route of Easy Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne — from the drop zones behind Utah Beach, through the winter line outside Bastogne, to Berchtesgaden and the Eagle’s Nest.

The itinerary covers Utah, Omaha, Pointe du Hoc and Gold, the American cemeteries at Colleville and Hamm, the foxholes at Bois Jacques, Dachau, and the Eagle’s Nest. About 1538 kilometres in a straight line, and a good deal more by road.

This site is the trip laid out day by day: where we go, and what happened on that ground in 1944 and 1945. Every entry sets those two things side by side, because from everything I have read, that is what standing in these places is actually like.

The route

01–03
France
Paris to Normandy → Utah Beach & the Cotentin → Colleville-sur-Mer to Arromanches
04
Belgium
Bastogne
05
Luxembourg
Bastogne to Hamm
06–09
Germany
Munich → Dachau & Munich → Obersalzberg & Berchtesgaden → Munich Airport

Places where the ground still shows it

All nine days

Day 02Utah Beach & the Cotentin, Normandy, France
Day 2: Utah Beach and the Airborne Sector
In the dark before dawn on 6 June 1944, some 13,000 American paratroopers dropped behind Utah Beach. Most landed nowhere near where they were meant to. The 4th Infantry Division came ashore two thousand yards off target — and it was the best thing that happened all day.
The first full day, and the one that goes where Easy Company started. Utah Beach itself, the Sherman and the B-26 on the sand, and the ground inland where the airborne divisions came down.
Day 03Colleville-sur-Mer to Arromanches, Normandy, France
Day 3: Omaha, Pointe du Hoc and Gold Beach
On Omaha the first wave lost roughly a third of its men before it reached the shingle. At Pointe du Hoc the Rangers went up a hundred feet of cliff to guns that had already been moved. Gold, four miles east, is where the Allies brought their own harbour.
The longest day on the itinerary and the heaviest. The American cemetery above Omaha, the cratered headland at Pointe du Hoc, then east to Gold, Longues-sur-Mer and Sainte-Mère-Église.
Day 04Bastogne, Belgium
Day 4: East to Belgium: McAuliffe Square and Bois Jacques
On 18 December 1944 the 101st Airborne was trucked into Bastogne overnight from a rest camp in France — short of ammunition, winter clothing and, in many cases, helmets. By 21 December seven German divisions had closed the ring around them.
The long drive east out of Normandy, and then straight to the treeline at Bois Jacques. The foxholes are the thing I most want to see on this whole trip.
Day 05Bastogne to Hamm, Luxembourg
Day 5: Bastogne and the Luxembourg American Cemetery
The Mardasson Memorial honours 76,890 American casualties of the Ardennes. Fifty miles south at Hamm, 5,073 Americans are buried, most of them killed in the same campaign — with Patton at the head of them.
A full day on the Bulge: the Mardasson star, the vehicle halls and command cellar at Bastogne Barracks, two museums, and then south into Luxembourg to Patton’s grave.
Day 07Dachau & Munich, Bavaria, Germany
Day 7: Dachau, and Munich Afterwards
Opened 22 March 1933, seven weeks after Hitler became Chancellor. The first Nazi concentration camp, the model for all the others, and the training ground for the men who ran them. Liberated by American troops on 29 April 1945.
The hardest day on the itinerary, and the reason the tour is worth taking. The memorial site in the morning; Marienplatz and the Hofbräuhaus in the afternoon, which is a strange sequence and probably the honest one.
Day 08Obersalzberg & Berchtesgaden, Bavaria, Germany
Day 8: Berchtesgaden and the Eagle’s Nest
The 506th reached Berchtesgaden on 5 May 1945. Three days later the war in Europe was over, and Easy Company was working its way through the contents of Göring’s cellar.
The last real day, and the only one with a view. A mountaintop tea house that took thirteen months and a fortune to build, that Hitler barely used, and that is now a very good place for lunch.