It is one thing to be complemented on your book by a reader. It is quite another thing to get praise for ‘Those Who Hold Bastogne’ from a young officer in today’s 101st Airborne Division. Here posing with Captain Jack LaZebnik who dropped by for a chat at the Bastogne War Museum book signing session [...]
Had a memorable meeting with Robert Edsel, author of the international bestseller ‘The Monuments Men,’ made into a movie with George Clooney and Matt Damon. Robert had suggested a get-together after reading my book, ‘The Margraten Boys.’ Monuments man Walter Huchthausen is one of the ten thousand American fallen commemorated at the Dutch WWII cemetery [...]
Signing my books long after dark at the Bastogne War Museum. The museum exceptionally stayed open for a book fair where I gave a talk and had an opportunity to meet readers just hours away from the 74th anniversary of the start of the Ardennes counteroffensive. A very special occasion.
Posing at a Sherman in Clervaux that stands as a reminder of the heavy fighting in the Luxembourg town on the road to Bastogne. “We’re surrounded and can’t get out,” Sergeant Donald Fink from his tank radioed to his commander in the American 9th Armored Division as the veteran German 2nd Panzer Division clinically took [...]
That is the guys standing, of course: Matthew Leitch (Sgt. Floyd Talbert), Ross McCall (Joseph Liebgott), and James Madio (Sgt. Frank Perconte) from the iconic series Band of Brothers. I am perfectly happy sitting at their feet as the Easy Company Tour historian for The National World War II Museum in New Orleans and the [...]
Pleased to share that I have just been named historian and project manager for a brand-new museum to be built and developed in Leopoldsburg, Belgium. The planned museum – Liberation Garden – will tell the transnational story of the Allied liberation in the region, with a strong emphasis on Operation Market Garden’s ground offensive in [...]
Posing at a Sherman tank in La Roche-en-Ardenne last week. The Belgian town paid a heavy price for its strategic location on the Ourthe River in the Battle of the Bulge. In my book THE UNKNOWN DEAD, I write: “By the time the guns fell silent, La Roche was such a heap of rubble that [...]
I have in recent weeks been taking quite a few small and large groups from all over the world on my author tours to Bastogne and America’s World War II cemeteries. Here I am taking some time out to pose for a selfie at Augusta Chiwy’s final resting place in the Bastogne cemetery, just opposite [...]
A special moment in a field in Bastogne. On 27 December 1944 a C-47 Skytrain named Stardust crashed near the trees to my rear after safely releasing a towed glider with emergency supplies. As I explain in my book, Those Who Hold Bastogne, the town’s defenders were still lacking in everything even after the arrival [...]
