Figure I'll share the best of my daily shots from my tour for the next two and a half weeks. Today Waterloo , I know not World War I but the impact and aftermath shaped Europe in not unsimilar ways and set the stage for the next wars. Just as World War I set the stage for wars that are even happening today.

This shot was taken from the spot near Le Belle Alliance looking toward Wellington's position and where Napoleon made his tactical plan for the battle.

Very cool! I was planning on a 20th wedding anniversary to Belgium and France next summer
For the 110th anniversary of the Somme but already got postponed for son's Boy Scout summer trip.

Humble brag: me and the boy at least get to go sailing on the Bahamas for 10 days, so not overly upset. Wife and I will probably go in the fall

The OP's picture really delights my heart. My first morning in Belgium, years ago, was spent wandering around in the mud on that battlefield. The crops were taller. There had been rain through the night. I felt specially blessed by God to have the opportunity to sink into the mud as I walked.

Before an organized tour with a guide, I sought first the battlefield that existed in my imagination, at dawn, alone. I tramped around the fields, saw Hougomont alone, and walked back to my hotel to change into clean boots before I met the group of Aggies with whom I was taking the official tour.

I soon learned that Victor Hugo's understanding of that battle is not universally shared by the locals. My appreciation for Napoleon is also not universally shared. Quelle dommage.

I eventually learned that the blessing of mud is not, among the Belgae, considered to be special.

On a WWI tour, I expect that you will be spending much of your time in Flanders, looking at trenches. The Flemish are very good at seafood. South of Brussels, if you are looking at the forts at Namur and Liege, the beef is incredible. Everywhere in that country, the art of brewing is practiced with an attention to detail that is unsurpassed in the rest of the world.

If you go down to Liege, they are particularly fond of their meatballs. If you see Boulets a la Ligeoise on the menu, take the plunge. Brasserie en Face is my favorite source. "Les Boules" are frequently served with Sirop de Liege. Le Sirop is also kick-ass with a stinky cheese like Herve/Limburg. A lot of my Italian countrymen migrated to Wallonia to work in the mines, and the cuisine of Liege benefited from the immigration. If you are up late and your companions are all abed, "Le Carre" is always ... friendly.

If you're in Namur, the climb up the Citadel is wonderful. I love that town. If you're into beer, there is a beer shop called Barnabeer that is not to be missed. The Royal Snail is a wonderful dinner, and my absolute favorite bar is a place called Cafe Du Centre on the Place d'Armes. It is an "old local guy" beer bar. You piss in a trough. It is not stylish. It is real. You can't even find the damn thing on Apple Maps. You will have escaped from the 20-something cosmopolitans and will be trading jokes with Walloons after the third beer. Fair warning. There's not a lot of English in that bar.

The other two restaurants in Namur that stick with me are Le Temps de Cerises and Brasserie du Quai. I have been to the latter with colleagues on several occasions, and I hope that I will, one day, take my wife to the former.

Have fun. I'm jealous. As you can tell, I've spent a bit of time wandering around that country, and I adore the Belgians.

Anyone touring Belgium should attend the nightly ceremony at the Menin Gate in Ypres.

Went there last night not quite silver taps level but still very powerful.

Today was the north end of the Ypres salient. Today's picture is in the Tyne Cot cemetery and concerns Australian Sgt. Lewis McGee the youngest of 11 children. McGee won the VC taking out the German bunker in the foreground on October 4,1917. For the next week, McGee and the Australians slugged their way up this Broonseide Ridge near the village of Passchendale, for which this battle is named. Eight days later, McGee and his men had only made it up to the area near the circular looking tree in the background. There he was killed on October 12, before his Victoria Cross could be issued and there he is buried. McGee is one of 3 VC awardees buried in Tyne Cot.

Having been captivated by reading Allistar Horne's "The Price of Glory" I would say Verdun and Forts Doumont and Vaux in particular.

Today, was a mix of the Great War and The second war, so much of the battlefields of 1914-18 were fought over again in 1940 such as Hill 60 near Ypres, Vimy Ridge and Arras. The Menin Gate and Monuments on Hill 60 have obvious bullet damage from 1940.

Today's picture is in the middle of a farmer's cornfield and it is a bunker known to have been used by Corporal Adolf Hitler as the command center of his battalion during fighting around Fromelles, FR.

How do we know he used it? On his way to Paris in 1940, he stopped in Ypres to see the Menin Gate, stayed in the house he lived in in Fromelles (he brought a brand new dog he had acquired that was stolen that night) and the next day he visited his old bunker that I visited today.

Today was tank day, first use of tanks at Monchy Le Preaux during the Battle of Arras and the first massed tank Battle of Cambrai.

Today's picture is a beautiful lady, Deborah. Deborah is the only remaining tank known to have fought in the Battle of Cambrai. We met Philippe the man who refound her buried in a farmer's field and runs the tank museum at Cambrai.

Deborah was approaching the Bourlon Woods, the second defensive line of the Germans. But to counter the massed tank attack the Germans moved their field guns on the flanks of the attackers and fired away. Deborah was knocked out by a shell through her side near the left gunner. Of the crew of eight, only the commander Lt. Frank Heep and Corporal George Foot who was the youngest member of the crew at 19 but the most experienced having been in the tank corps at Monchy Le Preaux. One of the crew members was celebrating a twentieth birthday on the day he died.

Deborah was in D platoon thus her name. Tanks with just a machine gun received a female name with the first letter of their platoon and ones with 6 pounder guns received male names. Here's Deborah:

Yes every one of those are on our itinerary.

Today, was nothing but the Battle of the Somme. What a killing field!

It is so open and German positions were so well placed the crazy slaughter should have been expected. After seeing the battlefield, I would have made more of an effort from the sunken road in no man's land where the Lanchashire Fusiliers charged some 30 minutes after being captured on moving film. One of the most iconic videos of the war. If you don't know what I'm talking about check it out on You Tube.

Today's photograph is where the Fusilier's charge as viewed from a German position on Hawthorn Ridge but 10 minutes before the attack this line was blown to hell by a mine explosion under the German lines, so there was no one there to flank the Fusiliers. The sunken road is the treeline with fall colors on the left. The German trenches were just in front of the right treeline. Just a 100 yard dash. The Fusiliers made it about 25 yards before machine gun fire cut most of them down.

BTW, they should have given the entire western front to the Canucks to interpret. Their visitor centers and parks are the best.

We started hitting some American related sites today. In one of the first ever combined and coordinated attacks of the war, utilizing infantry, artillery, armor and aircraft Australian General John Monash attacked the Hamel Heights near the Somme River. Monash was of German and Jewish ancestry and he was one of the more creative generals of the war. Part of Monash's command was a battalion of the 131st Infantry Regiment of the 3rd Division. Advancing behind the tanks, the battalion was halted by machine gun fire and went to ground. Corporal Thomas Pope advanced alone to the machine gun nest. He bayoneted the crew and fought off counterattacks standing astride the machine gun firing at the enemy until his comrades joined him. Pope was the first American in World War I to be awarded the Medal of Honor. Somewhere in this picture is where it happened.

Today was Marine Day so much so that I had a hankering for crayons by the end of the day.

Seriously it was a moving day. We had the mom of a Marine who was KIA in Fallujah and she said her son's best day in the corps was the day he went with Commandant to Belleau Wood. She had the picture of that day and in addition to her son, one other was killed in Fallujah and one was awarded a Silver Star for heroism in Fallujah. Her grandson is currently a marine at Pendleton.

The story of the Marines at Belleau Woods is a capsule is they arrived at a desperate point in the line in June 1918. The French suggested they fall back to a more defensible place and build more than foxholes. But the marines would have none of that and defeated a German attack. A few days later the marines unsuccessfully attacked the Woods. So they went back to the drawing board, brought in a load of French guns, blasted the hill and took the Woods.

Part of what was so moving was sitting at the grave in today's picture of Jimmy Dean. Dean was killed in the unsuccessful attack on Belleau Wood. Jimmy's company crawled through a freshet stream up the hill to the church in the town of Bouresches (we saw this wet low point by the church, it must have been awful). Only 25 men made it to the town and the Germans let them have it. Jimmy was killed instantly by shrapnel.

At his grave today, we read the moving letter to his mom from his lieutenant, who credited Jimmy with saving his life by dying himself. After that we placed the French and American flags on his grave, the one Marine in our group rubbed sand from Omaha Beach into the engraving of his tombstone that makes the lettering pop.

At the end of our day we were at the Aisne-Oinse American cemetery and the attendant gave me (and the other Aggie on this trip) the honor of lowering and folding the flag after the playing of taps.

The theme today in the area of the Second Marne was diversity. We saw where the Harlam Hellfighters fought during the Second Marne and we walked into another farmer's field to see a World War II damaged monument place by the completely African American 371st Regiment, who were on the Hell fighters right. Because even the officers of the 371st were black, they were incorporated into and fought with a French Division. Their unit symbol was a bison, in homage to the buffalo soldiers and the regiment proudly wore that patch in World War 2 as well. The 371st monument was placed on a commanding ridge they captured on October 8, 1918. One of the unique aspects of the monument, is it sits on the exact site of the event it commemorates. In a Ruse de guerre, the German's acted like they were surrendering, even sending a captured sergeant telling the 371st that they were whipped and wanted to surrender. With hande hoch, the Germans waited until a sizable number of the regiment were visible and close . the Germans at that point jumped back into their trenches and opened fire. My guess is the 371st didn't take many prisoners after that.

But today's picture is of the Russian monument on the Second Marne Battlefield. The Czar was requested by France to send 300,000 men to France to fight the Hun. Nicolas obliged but only sent two brigades. One came through the Baltic with men from St. Petersburg and got there quickly. The second made up of mostly peasants took almost exactly a year to get there traveling to Archangel by train and then by ship to Singapore across the Bay of Bengal, Capetown and then north to Marseilles arriving in April 1916. When the French mutiny occurred in 1917 they thought of joining them but ended up staying in the line.

But the Russian Revolution tore them apart and the actual fighting between the whites and reds required French artillery to fire on them to break it up. After the war the Reds went home but the Whites could not. So, they formed a community nearby and stayed in France. As we visited the Russian cemetery nearby, we got curious stares from the people going to Sunday services at the Russian Orthodox Church next door.

The inscription on the monument is poignant it translates to:

"Children of France, when the enemy is defeated, be free to pick flowers from these fields. Remember us, your Russian friends and bring us flowers."

As you can see the children of France have remembered.

Today was Verdun, the Ossuary here is amazing as is the battlefield museum. But the real highlight for me was Ft. Doueaumont. I think in the mind blowing history thread I have two items about this fort, I posted about a year ago. One is about the Monty Pythonesque capture of this place and the other is about Bavarian troops killing hundreds by cooking food in the powder magazine. Since I have bad Internet here in the middle of the Argonne Forest that will have to do.

Today's picture is the beneath ground passageways of the fort. You can almost imagine Sgt.Kunze wandering these corridors looking for someone to capture.

Today was the first day of two in the Meuse Argonne and we picked up a French guide for the next two days named Jean-Paul de Vries.

It was a sad day for him but he was still a stupendous guide, with an amazing attitude. For over 40 years Jean-Paul has collected artifacts within 5 Km. of the town of Romange en Argonne. He has placed these artifacts in a museum there for school children to see and to take them to the battlefields for guided walks. When we arrived at his museum there were several vehicles surrounding it and boxes were being loaded into cars. Beginning yesterday, the French government was seizing all his relics as property of France. It looks like it is the end of his forty year business and life calling. He said yesterday police, EOD and national archeologists were crawling over the place. He said they had already taken one of his most favorite artifacts he had dig up, a US mess kit where the soldier had scratched into it, "This place is the s**ts."

Despite his sorrow, Jean-Paul took us to the Hindenburg Line in the forest and showed us the doomed assaults of the 42nd Division under McArthur. After lunch in what was left of his museum, he took us to Cluny a smaller town than Romange about 5 Km east. In Cluny behind the church across from his home, he showed us where the Germans executed two men and a woman with a machine gun for terrorist activities. In 1914. The bullet marks are quite clear in the back of the church wall.

But the main thing he brought us to the village to show us was where Sgt. Samuel Woodfill, a soldier of the Philippines Insurrection, Word War I and II, earned the Medal of Honor by single handedly knocking out three machine guns approaching Cluny. Today's picture is of Cluny standing on the site of the first nest. The second is out of view to the right and the third was in the building to the left of the church.

No, it is something I would not see happening., the allied dead are pretty much revered over here. Besides, multiple countries run different sections of the battlefield such as Canada running Paschendale and Vimy Ridge. In fact, it may be that feeling that is driving the government's actions against Jean-Paul, rather than the neglect of memory. The biggest problem they have with his idea of memory, is he doesn't make the Germans out to be the bad guys. He has a tremendous respect for all soldiers, no matter their nationality. Interestingly, he said he would like to see France have compulsory service like Israel.

Day 2 of the Meuse Argonne. We saw where the Lost Battalion was and where Sgt. York achieved his fame. But really enjoyed the views of the Meuse Argonne from the Butte Vaquois on the Hindenburg Line. Saw the first artifacts still just sitting on top of the ground in pieces of shell. This part of the line did not move for four years. As a result the town of Vaquois was obliterated but pieces of the rubble still remain scattered around. This place also has some of the best preserved trenches with real barbed wire and deep tunnels and dugouts. It seemed like every 10 feet there was an entrance to an underground tunnel for protection. Between the Germans and the French 219 mines were exploded here creating an 800 meter long crater and taking off about 30 feet of the butte. Today's picture is a view from the edge of the crater looking at the front line trenches and the Meuse Argonne beyond. The Americans finally took this place in the waning days of the war.

Last day of the tour and it was all about the end of the war. We started at the largest American cemetery in France with 15,000 men. Most died within two months of the Armistice and when you consider 66% of the American dead were reclaimed by the family it is very sobering. We had another ceremony in the unknown chapel and as the longest serving vet, they asked me to lay a flowered wreath on the altar in the chapel.

Today's picture and story concerns the last American killed in the war at 10:59 a.m. on November 11, 1918, Henry Gunther. Henry was a German-American sergeant from Baltimore. He was in the rear with the gear for most of the war. But the censors got on to him for writing letters home telling people not to join the war effort and it was terrible to be a part of.

Henry was busted to private, given a rifle and sent to the front. On the last day General in Chief Ferdinand Foch wanted the allies to push on in case the war resumed if the ceasefire failed. Henry and his battalion were attacking through this valley left to right trying to seize the village in the center of this photograph.. They came upon a machine gun guarding the town. Henry's sergeant said if they were going to capture the town they needed to get rid of that machine gun. Henry must have felt he needed to prove something, as he immediately jumped up and charged the machine gun. The Germans manning the gun waved Henry back to his lines but he answered them with two shots firing from the hip. The Germans reluctantly fired hitting Henry in the head killing him instantly. His sergeant rank was restored posthumously.

At 10:44 a.m. on November 11, a runner made it to the 313th regiment with orders to stop the fighting in 16 minutes. "Hold the lines at the spot, and neither advance nor give way to the rear," he panted.

Sixteen minutes. That's all Gunther might have believed he had left to regain his honor and prove his allegiance to the United States. While two German machine gun squads manning a roadblock counted down the war's remaining minutes, they saw a shadowy figure materialize out of the fog. As shots rang out, Gunther threw himself on the ground but continued to crawl forward through the mud.

The Germans kept watch on the American soldier who suddenly rose to his feet and charged toward the machine-gun nest with his fixed bayonet. Gunther's comrades yelled at him to stop as did the bewildered Germans in broken English. Didn't he know the war was minutes from its end? If he heard the pleas, Gunther ignored them.

A five-round burst from a German gun struck Gunther in the left temple. He died instantly. His body collapsed in the mud. The time was 10:59 a.m.