for bob tours: was there a moment (or more than one) at a place where you felt ~connected to a scene from bob/the real events?
All the tours I’ve been on have special moments, though some more than others. Thank you for asking me about this, as I love recounting these memories. Some of this is actually what you asked for; the rest is just me being sappy.
Okay, ready? Behind the read more because it's SUPER long.
Eindhoven tour, April 2022
This was the first WW2 tour I’ve ever been on and the first of We Happy Few 506’s Band of Brothers tours. Special for that reason alone. It was a one-day tour with a Q&A the day before, and only four out of six actors who were supposed to join actually made it over to Eindhoven. First up: Matthew Leitch (Floyd ‘Tab’ Talbert), our fierce leader on all of the tours so I won’t mention him every time. He co-founded WHF506. He’s kind of a very annoying older brother to me now. Also there were Tim Matthews (Alex Penkala), Doug Allen (Alton More) and Mark Lawrence (William H. Dukeman).
I enjoyed the Q&A, though at that point was far too insecure to ask anything about Band because the room was filled with much bigger WW2 nerds (at the time, I’ve now caught up) who all seemed to ask very profound questions. I also shied away from taking any photos with the actors because people pretty much swarmed them, and I’m slightly claustrophobic.
I was making art already at that point, and for this trip had managed to draw Matt and Mark. See here a moment of joy for me.
The next day was the day of the tour, and I was pretty nervous about it because I’d never done a bus tour before, but in my experience, buses aren’t particularly wheelchair-friendly. Such was the case here, too, but the moment I approached the daunting steps of the Megabus, guests (special and not) flocked over to help me up them. All doubt evaporated. I got appointed the spacious back-of-the-bus seat, with my cousin on one side and Mark Lawrence on the other.
I’ll single Mark out for this tour because our conversations on the bus were very real and important to me. But also because one of the most moving moments on the tour happened when we visited the Crossroads. This is where Mark’s character and the real Dukeman died. If you ever get to visit... the Crossroads in the show looks exactly like the real location. Easily one of the most true-to-life set locations. And Mark had never been to the Netherlands. It tore him up. We all sniffled, watching him cry. The thing you have to realise is that he feels like he owes his entire life to the show. He met his lovely wife because she saw him on tv, and they fell in love. He has Dukeman’s service number tattooed on his body. And he’s the kindest, sweetest soul.
Later, months after the tour, he called me up to sing me happy birthday at six in the morning.
Both Doug and Tim remain my friends to this day. I’m perhaps most grateful for the connections made on these tours. Some of the other guests are now also like family.
Bastogne tour - part 1, November 2022
Bastogne is a magical place for me. I took one of my geekiest friends on this second tour. Special guests were Freddie Joe Farnsworth (military advisor on both BoB and the Pacific) and Phil McKee (Strayer). Not the most well-known people in this fandom I think. But interesting. And funny.
This tour was led by Reg Jans, and he’s THE guide who knows everything you could ever want to know about the Battle of the Bulge. So, during this tour, I feel like I learned a lot more about that, beyond what we see in Band.
Of course, we also visited Easy Company’s foxholes in the Bois Jacques. There was no snow (stay tuned for that on a later tour), so it’s not like it is in the show. But the woods are eerily quiet. I don’t know if I believe in anything supernatural beyond things like intuition, but if I were to start anywhere, it’d be there. Freddie Joe explained the consequences of sleep deprivation for your brain to us, to help us understand the soldiers better. Sometimes, they were their own worst enemies. They were freezing, underfed, underdressed and barraged by artillery, and most of the time, could not even see the Germans.
We also visited where John Julian was pinned down by Germans for hours. It’s still unclear what exactly happened to him, or when or how he died. We only see seconds of it in the show. It's like that with many things in the show actually. All the battles took a long, long time.
This tour isn’t my favourite - there’s a better one right after this, but this did solidify the idea that I would go on these tours just to see the people I’ve met while there.
Bastogne tour - part 2, January 2023
Here it is, my favourite tour. Barely two months after the last one. Bastogne in the very dead of winter. Let me tell you: it was COLD. But it would have been, for the soldiers of Easy.
The special guests on the second day of the tour were Shane Taylor (Eugene ‘Doc’ Roe), and Lucie Jeanne (Renee Lemaire). Doug (Alton More) was also there, and it was lovely to see him again. But as you can guess, having Doc Roe and Renee on the tour in Bastogne is pretty amazing. Eugene and Renee never actually met each other, one of the few dramatisations of the show. It serves a purpose, though, so it’s mostly seen as acceptable. Renee’s story is quite tragic, and she died very close to where she had lived with her parents and her body was wrapped in the fine silk of parachutes and brought back to them.
There were also some good hugs at the 'Nuts' bar! But the absolutely most amazing part of the tour happened without them. Our second day started really, really early. We got up at 5 am, got on the bus, and drove to the Bois Jacques. It was still pitch black when we got out, freezing cold and fresh snow crunched underneath our sleepy feet.
Reg Jans was on this tour again, and he had something truly haunting in store for us. We all stood in a circle around him with our (mostly just purchased for this trip) head torches on as he recited a prayer by Lt. Col. Robert L. Wolverton, commanding officer of 3rd battalion, 506th PIR.
Here it is.
Men, I am not a religious man and I don't know your feelings in this matter, but I am going to ask you to pray with me for the success of the mission before us. And while we pray, let us get on our knees and not look down but up with faces raised to the sky so that we can see God and ask His blessing in what we are about to do: God almighty, in a few short hours we will be in battle with the enemy. We do not join battle afraid. We do not ask favors or indulgence but ask that, if You will, use us as Your instrument for the right and an aid in returning peace to the world. We do not know or seek what our fate will be. We ask only this, that if die we must, that we die as men would die, without complaining, without pleading and safe in the feeling that we have done our best for what we believed was right. O Lord, protect our loved ones and be near us in the fire ahead and with us now as we pray to you.
And into the woods, we went. You have to remember, there are no cars at this hour. It’s dark. It’s quiet. We were told to be quiet. We were told to sit in the foxholes in the snow. We switched off our lights. No one was shooting at us, but we felt, in part, what the men of Easy Company would have felt. And then we watched the sun come up. It’s the closest thing to a religious experience I’ve ever felt.
I met one of my favourite people in the world on this tour, too. He took these wonderful photos of me and inspired me to take up photography again, myself.
Normandy tour, June 2023
This tour was a bit of an odd one out. It felt chaotic because it was scheduled around D-Day, which made Normandy really poorly accessible. It’s so busy, so our tour was mostly improvised around areas with the least amount of traffic jams.
It did have its moments, though. Normandy is a cool place. And we had the amazing Pete McCabe (Donald Hoobler) with us.
The day before the tour, I actually got to meet three Normandy veterans. Humbling, to say the least. I also met several more Band actors (Peter Youngblood Hills, Alex Sagba-Brady, Christian Black, Nolan Hemmings) and Scott Gibson, who played Captain Haldane in the Pacific. We still keep in touch. Christian Black is now a Still Photographer, and mostly shoots Tom Cruise’s movie stills. He also took this photo of Nolan Hemmings, this painting of him and little old me.
I was really glad to see many friends again. And I brought my own camera and took amazing pictures (teehee). We saw most of Easy’s known landing spots in Sainte Mère Eglise, like Winters’ and Lipton’s, to name a few.
Our guide here was Paul ‘Woody’ Woodadge, an English guy married to a French woman. He’s nice, but critical of Easy’s fame, not so much on account of Easy, but mostly because Easy was just one of the many companies that did incredible things. We visited the area around Brécourt Manor, where we learned that other company Paratroopers cleared the way for Easy’s famous mission. It doesn’t make it less impressive, but it adds loads of context.
Another thing that I found incredibly moving was the reading of Lt. Meehan’s last letter home. It’s easy to forget how young these men were. And how wise. Meehan’s plane crashed in a field, and nearly 80 years later, you can still see where it landed because while the field is fully planted, there’s a part near a hedgerow that remains barren to this day. Haunting.
We also visited Marmion Farm, where many famous Easy Company photos were taken (it’s where they more or less come back together after the jump).
One of my favourite stories, though, is that of medics Robert Wright and Ken Moore of the 101st Airborne. They treated 80 injured American and German soldiers and a child in a church in Angoville-au-Plain. There are still bloodstains on the pews.
So, as you can tell, not everything had to do with Easy, because we also went to Omaha Beach, where I got out of my chair and walked. Just to walk where these brave men had walked and really feel the history.
Eindhoven/Arnhem Market Garden Tour, October 2023
My second favourite tour after Bastogne in winter. Our guest here was Mark Huberman (Lester Hashey) who was meant to come on the original Eindhoven tour but couldn’t. He’s delightfully Irish, and had the best anecdotes from the set. Also absolutely hilarious.
Many of my friends weren’t on this tour, so going on to it, I couldn’t have guessed it would rank among my favourites.
It was split between two things. Some Easy Company sites and stories (some repeats from the first tour, but often with a slightly different angle or experience), and the British side of Operation Market Garden!
By the way, did you know that Hoobler picks up the Luger that ends up killing him in Bastogne, at the Crossroads? I think they changed it in the show to let the story flow better.
Anyway. I loved this tour. We visited Schoonderlogt and the Crossroads again. This time I sat in the grassy field while everyone else did the famous run across. It’s such a long way!
But the stories of the British troops were perhaps even cooler to me. Because that all happened right on my doorstep. I knew the bigger picture, but we had Reg Jans on this tour again, which is synonymous with really personal stories. So for our British troops day, we followed in the footsteps of leaders and soldiers alike, until we met them again in their final resting place in the military cemetery. A really rewarding journey. Mark also read a letter by Ivar Rowberry, which I posted about here. There’s an audio recording of it too, which is well worth a listen.
If you want to read more about any of these tours (I’m a bit tired of writing so much, check out my actual - non tumblr - blog over here. There is an entry for each one, there.
