To visit the place a relative, or loved one, fought and to try to understand what they endured is one of the most popular reasons for a battlefield tour, and recently it was this reason that Mike and Claudia Houpt travelled from Mississippi to Normandy.
Mike’s wife Claudia wanted to visit Omaha as her father took part in the Normandy Campaign crossing Omaha Beach early on D-Day, Mikes’s father landed there several days later and was among the US Forces surrounded in the Battle of the Bulge; both their fathers then remained in Europe until the war ended.
Chatting as we walked across Omaha Beach Mike added. ‘Neither of our fathers talked much about the War, or Normandy when Claudia and I were growing up, but our son was more inquisitive, he got them to tell him stories.’
He went on to add. ‘I just hope that my son gets a chance someday to take the tour that we completed with Matt, as it will help him then fully understand what the folks went through back in 1944’
Joined by three friends on the tour Mike and Claudia believed the battlefield tour brought together many of the missing pieces and certainly helped them both understand what it was their fathers endured.
In addition to Omaha Beach Mike and Claudia wanted to visit Pegasus Bridge café and look at the first house liberated in France in the very early hours of D-Day.