Since 2019 is the 75th year of the liberation of occupied Europe, the UK and Lowlands Chapter decided to hold a meeting in Caen, near the Normandy Beaches. 60 Valkyrie bikes attended the meeting.
Our group of 9 Riders followed the trail of General Patton afterwards through France and Belgium.
We started in the Netherlands and rode to France for the 4-day meeting. We met many old and new friends and the program called for individual rides during the first 2 days and a common ride on Saturday and, of course, parties every night.
The Normandy invasion began with overnight parachute and glider landings, massive air attacks and naval bombardments. In the early morning, amphibious landings commenced on five beaches codenamed Sword, Juno, Gold, Omaha and Utah, with troops from the United States landing on Omaha and Utah, Britain landing on Gold and Sword, and Canada landing on Juno.
Standing in the way of the Allies was the English Channel. Compounding the difficulty of invasion was the extensive Atlantic Wall. Believing that any forthcoming landings would be timed for high tide (this caused the landings to be timed for low tide), Hitler had the entire wall fortified with tank top turrets and extensive barbed wire, and laid a million mines to deter landing craft. The sector that was attacked was guarded by four German divisions.
The first day, we started off with a ride to the Pegasos Bridge. On 6 June 1944 the bridge was the objective of members of D Company, 2nd (Airborne) Battalion, a glider-borne force that came in action during the opening minutes of the Allied invasion of Normandy. Under the command of Major John Howard, D Company was to land close by the bridges in six AS 51 Horsa gliders and, in a coup-de-main operation, take both intact and hold them until relieved by the main invasion forces. The successful capture of the bridges played an important role in limiting the effectiveness of a German counter-attack in the aftermath of the Normandy invasion.
(Left) This was the first house in France to be liberated during the last hour of 5th June 1944 by the 6th Airborne Division. The owner of the house, now an old lady and still active, was 6 years of age when the paratroopers landed in 1944. (Right) Bobbievalk, UK Chapter Rep at the bridge.
We then rode to the German Merville Battery nearby. This battery could threaten the landing beach, codenamed Sword, to the west of Ouistreham, where the British were due to land later that day.
The 9th Parachute Battalion, part of the 3rd Parachute Brigade attached to 6th Airborne Division, was given the objective of destroying the battery. However, when the battalion arrived over Normandy, their parachute descent was dispersed over a large area, so instead of over 600 men, only 150 with no heavy weapons or equipment arrived at the battalion assembly point. Regardless, they pressed home their attack and succeeded in capturing the battery. Using what explosives they had been able to recover, the surviving 75 men tried to disable the guns.
To the right the nearby village decided to honour LtCol Otway by the placing of a bust depicting him at the age of 29 at the time of D-Day and the assault on the battery. In 2007 his medals and beret were donated to the Merville Battery Museum by his wife, Jean.
After having visited the museum, we continued to the beaches. We rode along Sword, Juno and Gold beach where the British and Canadian invasion armies landed.
(Left) Canadian Memorial text at a nearby house. (Right) Remains of the Mulberry Harbour at Gold Beach. These were temporary portable harbours developed by the United Kingdom to facilitate the rapid offloading of cargo onto beaches during the Allied invasion. After the Allies successfully held beachheads following D-Day, two prefabricated harbours were taken in sections across the English Channel from Britain with the invading army and assembled off Omaha Beach and Gold Beach. The harbour at Gold Beach was used for 10 months after D-Day and over 2.5 million men, 500,000 vehicles, and 4 million tons of supplies were landed before it was fully decommissioned. The still only partially-completed Mulberry harbour at Omaha Beach was damaged on 19 June by a violent storm that suddenly arrived from the north-east. After three days the storm finally abated and damage was found to be so severe that the harbour had to be abandoned.
Some museum pieces
This tank was hit and you can see the impact on the other side as well
Omaha, the most heavily defended beach, was assigned to the 1st Infantry Division and 29th Infantry Division. They faced the 352nd Infantry Division rather than the expected single regiment. Strong currents forced many landing craft east of their intended position or caused them to be delayed. For fear of hitting the landing craft, US bombers delayed releasing their loads and, as a result, most of the beach obstacles at Omaha remained undamaged when the men came ashore. Many of the landing craft ran aground on sandbars and the men had to wade 50–100m in water up to their necks while under fire to get to the beach. In spite of the rough seas, DD tanks of two companies were dropped 5,000 yards (4,600 m) from shore; however, 27 of the 32 flooded and sank, with the loss of 33 crew. Some tanks, disabled on the beach, continued to provide covering fire until their ammunition ran out or they were swamped by the rising tideOmaha Beach. So, very little went as planned during the landing at Omaha. Of the initial assault, ten landing craft were swamped by the rough seas before they reached the beach, and several others stayed afloat only because their passengers bailed water out with their helmets. The defenses inflicted heavy casualties on landing U.S. troops. Under heavy fire, the engineers struggled to clear the beach obstacles; later landings bunched up around the few channels that were cleared. Weakened by the casualties taken just in landing, the surviving assault troops could not clear the heavily defended exits off the beach. This caused further problems and consequent delays for later landings. Small penetrations were eventually achieved by groups of survivors making improvised assaults, scaling the bluffs between the most heavily defended points. By the end of the day, two small isolated footholds had been won, which were subsequently exploited against weaker defenses further inland, thus achieving the original D-Day objectives over the following days.
Only 100 of the 2,400 tons of supplies scheduled to be landed on D-Day were landed. An accurate figure for casualties incurred by V Corps at Omaha on 6 June is not known; sources vary between 2,000 and over 5,000 killed, wounded, and missing, with the heaviest losses incurred by the infantry, tanks and engineers in the first landings. Only five tanks of the 741st Tank Battalion were ready for action the next day. The German 352nd division suffered 1,200 killed, wounded and missing; about 20% of its strength.
We sat down to have a cup of coffee and tried to comprehend was has been going on here. Impossible.
During the final part of the day, we visited 'Pointe du Hoc'. The assault over here was carried out in ten landing craft, with another two carrying supplies and four amphibious trucks carrying the 100-foot (30 m) ladders requisitioned from the London Fire Brigade. One landing craft carrying troops sank, drowning all but one of its occupants; another was swamped. One supply craft sank and the other put the stores overboard to stay afloat. German fire sank one of the trucks. Once within a mile of the shore, German mortars and machine guns fired on the craft.
These initial setbacks resulted in a 40-minute delay in landing at the base of the cliffs with approximately half the force it started out with. The landing craft were fitted with rocket launchers to fire grapnels and ropes up the cliffs. As the Rangers scaled the cliffs, the Allied ships provided them with fire support and ensured that the German defenders above could not fire down on the assaulting troops. The cliffs proved to be higher than the ladders could reach.
The original plans had also called for an additional, larger Ranger force of eight companies to follow the first attack, if successful. Flares from the cliff tops were to signal this second wave to join the attack, but because of the delayed landing, the signal came too late, and the other Rangers landed on Omaha instead of Pointe du Hoc.
The force at the top of the cliffs also found that their radios were ineffective. Upon reaching the fortifications, most of the Rangers learned for the first time that the main objective of the assault, the artillery battery, had been removed. The Rangers regrouped at the top of the cliffs, and a small patrol went off in search of the guns. Two different patrols found five of the six guns nearby (the sixth was being fixed elsewhere) and destroyed their firing mechanisms with thermite grenades. At the end of the two-day action, the initial Ranger landing force of 225+ was reduced to about 90 fighting men
In the afternoon, we decided to visit the US war cemetry and visitors center.
The Normandy landings consisted of 5,000 landing and assault craft, 289 escort vessels, and 277 minesweepers. Nearly 160,000 troops crossed the English Channel on D-Day, with 875,000 men disembarking by the end of June. Allied casualties on the first day were at least 10,000, with 4,414 confirmed dead. Lower right is one of the Niland Brothers graves. The film Saving Private Ryan is based on the brothers' story.
On Saturday everyone went to Falaise. Here, the decisive engagement of the Battle of Normandy was fought. A pocket was formed around German Army Group B, with the 7th Army and the Fifth Panzer Army encircled by the Western Allies. The battle resulted in the destruction of most of German Army west of the Seine River, which opened the way to Paris and the Franco-German border for the Allied armies on the Western Front. 80,000–100,000 troops were caught in the encirclement, of whom 10,000–15,000 were killed, 40,000–50,000 were taken prisoner, and 20,000–50,000 escaped. The remnants of 14–15 German divisions were in the pocket. German losses included 344 tanks, self-propelled guns and other light armoured vehicles, as well as 2,447 soft-skinned vehicles and 252 guns abandoned or destroyed. According to Gen. Dwight Eisenhower the battlefield at Falaise was unquestionably one of the greatest "killing fields" of any of the war areas. Forty-eight hours after the battle he was conducted through it on foot. It was literally possible to walk for hundreds of yards at a time, stepping on nothing but dead and decaying flesh.
After the invasion of Poland in 1939, over 16.000 men and 380 armoured fighting vehicles of the Polish army managed to reach the UK under command of Gen. Maczek. He played a major and decisive role in this battle. The Polish division closed the encirclement gap, which was only 3 kilometers wide in the end. In defending a crucially inportant hill, the Polish soldiers ran out of ammunition and with outstanding bravery succeeded in doing so, some soldiers even fought against the Germans with broken bottles. After this decisive battle, Maczek's Division continued to spearhead the Allied drive across the battlefields of northern France, Belgium, the Netherlands and finally Germany. Thanks to an outflanking manoeuvre, it proved possible to free Breda in the Netherlands after a hard fight but without incurring losses in the town's population. A petition on behalf of 40,000 inhabitants of Breda resulted in Maczek being made an honorary Dutch citizen after the war. The Division's finest hour came when its forces accepted the surrender of the German naval base of Wilhelmshaven, taking captive the entire garrison, together with some 200 vessels of Hitler's Navy.
Maczek commanded the 1st Armoured Division until the end of European hostilities and was promoted to major-general. Despite his impressive track of victories, this remarkable tactician of armoured warfare was not granted to return to Poland. Tragically, after the war Maczek was stripped of Polish citizenship by the Communist government of Poland, and thus had to remain in Britain. He left the army but was for some reason denied a general's pension by the British government. As a result, Maczek worked as a bartender at an Edinburgh hotel until the 1960s. In 1989, the last Polish Communist Government issued a public apology to the General, and in 1994 he was presented with Poland's highest state decoration, the Order of the White Eagle
Well aware of the countless US, British, Canadian and allied lives and sacrifices that have been given for freeing Europe of the nazi's and restoring democracy and by no means intending to be disrespectful, we decided to celebrate our freedom at night the way these men most likely wanted us to do.
(Right) Colin brought his sound studio along and acted as discjockey
Video's
Nun act (Facebook) -
https://www.facebook.com/mach180365/videos/10220397633637202/ Lancaster Sketch -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRJtf89qwXU&feature=youtu.beD-Day and beyond (Facebook) -
https://www.facebook.com/229066994535536/videos/230049907770578/ 
After a great meeting, we said goodbye to our UK friends and proceeded on the socalled 'Liberation Route'. This is the route of Gen. Patton's Army after the invasion in Normandy.
This point depicts the start of the liberation route
Patton considered himself, with good reason, ‘the best damn ass-kicker in the U.S. Army.’ General Patton was one of the U.S. Army's and America's greatest commanding Generals . When Third Army was moved to France, in July of 1944, they began a great dash across France. The Germans launched their last great offensive of the war - the Battle of the Bulge. In one of the great moves of the war, Patton turned Third Army's axis of advance through ninety degrees and set it upon the south of the German forces. By January 1945, the remainder of the process of closing up to the Rhine could be completed. Vicious fighting took place, but by April there was but one great natural the Rhine River. However, the bridgehead was won, and Third Army embarked on another great eastward dash. In May liberated the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camps. 3rd army spent 281 days of incessant victorious combat, penetrations have advanced further in less time than any other army in history. It fought its way a cross 24 major rivers and innumerable steams and liberated and conquered more than 82,000 square miles of territory including 1500 cities and towns and some 12,000 un-inhabited places. The 3rd Army captured in battle 956,000 of the enemy and killed or wounded over 500,000 others. France Belgium Luxembourg, Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia bear witness to the exploits. There were from time to time under the 3rd Army 6 corps and 42 divisions. Patton's colorful personality, hard-driving leadership style and great oratory skill is seen as integral to his ability to inspire troops under his command and succes as a commander. His courage and valor will always be remembered.
Fontainebleu, this medieval castle and subsequent palace served as a residence for the French monarchs and was used as German HQ during WW2.
Our next stop was Chartres. This city suffered heavy damage by bombing during the battle of Chartres in August 1944, but its cathedral was spared by an American Army officer who challenged the order to destroy it. He volunteered to go behind enemy lines to find out whether the Germans were using it as an observation post. With his driver, Griffith proceeded to the cathedral and, after searching it all the way up its bell tower, confirmed to Headquarters that it was empty of Germans. The order to destroy the cathedral was withdrawn. Colonel Griffith was killed in action later on that day in the town of Lèves, close to Chartres. For his heroic action both at Chartres and Lèves, Colonel Griffith received, posthumously, several decorations awarded by the President of the United States and the U.S. Military, and also from the French government. Following deep reconnaissance missions in the region and after heavy fighting in and around the city, Chartres was liberated on 18 August 1944 by the U.S. 5th Infantry and 7th Armored Divisions belonging to the U.S. Third Army commanded by Patton.
Video. We witnessed an astonishing lightshow at the cathedral during the evening. Take some time to watch this 12 mins show. (Facebook)
https://www.facebook.com/romy.fievez/videos/10214105908578149/Our final stop was at the Luxembourg war cemetry and nearby Bastogne in Belgium, where the 'Battle of the Bulge' took place. The Ardennes Counteroffensive was the last major German offensive campaign on the Western Front and took place from 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945. It was launched through the densely forested Ardennes region The offensive was intended to stop Allied use of the Belgian port of Antwerp and to split the Allied lines, allowing the Germans to encircle and destroy four Allied armies and force the Western Allies to negotiate a peace treaty. The Germans achieved a total surprise attack due to a combination of Allied overconfidence, preoccupation with Allied offensive plans, and poor aerial reconnaissance due to bad weather. American forces bore the brunt of the attack and incurred their highest casualties of any operation during the war. The battle also severely depleted Germany's armored forces, and they were largely unable to replace them. The Germans' initial attack involved 410,000 men; just over 1,400 tanks, tank destroyers, and assault guns; 2,600 artillery pieces; 1,600 anti-tank guns; and over 1,000 combat aircraft, as well as large numbers of other armored fighting vehicles. These were reinforced a couple of weeks later, bringing the offensive's total strength to around 450,000 troops, and 1,500 tanks and assault guns. Between 63,222 and 98,000 of these men were killed, missing, wounded in action, or captured. For the Americans, out of a peak of 610,000 troops, 89,000 became casualties out of which some 19,000 were killed. During World War II, most U.S. black soldiers still served only in maintenance or service positions, or in segregated units. Because of troop shortages during the Battle of the Bulge, Eisenhower decided to integrate the service for the first time and this was an important step toward a desegregated United States military. More than 2,000 black soldiers had volunteered to go to the front. A total of 708 black Americans were killed in combat during World War II. The "Bulge" was the largest and bloodiest single battle fought by the United States in World War II and the second deadliest campaign in American history.
On December 8, 1945, Patton's car collided with an American army truck. He died from his injuries at the hospital in Heidelberg a few weeks later. He was buried in accordance with his request to "be buried with his men".
In the Bastogne war museum stands the last milestone of the liberation route.
A few of many hundreds of statements shown that made a deep impression om me.
This 39 ft tall monument in the shape of a five-pointed American star with 102 ft sides surrounding a 66 ft wide atrium is placed at Mardasson, near Basogne. The inner walls are covered with ten passages carved in stone commemorating the battle, and the parapet bears the names of the then 48 U.S. States. Insignia of most participating battalions are shown on the walls, representing the 76,890 killed and wounded during the thwarted December 1944–January 1945 "Battle of the Bulge".
If you want to see all the album pics, the link is
https://www.flickr.com/photos/beer1952/albums/72157710823680738 
