Audie Murphy and Colmar Pocket a Private WWII Battlefield Tour
- 5 hours
- Free cancellation up to 24h before
- Guided in English
- Instant confirmation
Highlights
On the Front Tours is a specialist WWII operator. The Colmar Pocket is led by battlefield historian Matthew Menneke, featured on National Geographic and the Discovery Channel, so you get genuine expertise on the ground, not a script read from a card. Because the tour is fully private, the day is built around your group alone — your pace, your questions, your interests. We don't combine you with strangers or rush a fixed timetable. And we connect the whole campaign into one clear story. Most of these sites have a plaque and little else; the value is a specialist who can link a Maginot casemate, a river crossing, Audie Murphy's stand and the final break at Jebsheim into a single narrative you actually understand by the end. - Stand at Holtzwihr, where Audie Murphy won the Medal of Honor - Seven battlefield stops in chronological order across Alsace - Private tour, your group only, led by a specialist historian - Hotel pick-up from Colmar or Freiburg
Inclusions
What's included
- Bottled water
- Private specialist battlefield historian
- Air-conditioned vehicle
- 'Then & Now' photographs and battlefield maps
What's not
- Meals
Itinerary
You begin in 1940 at a Maginot Line casemate on the Rhine, where the German invasion first broke into France. Five years later, the war returns to this same river. Your guide sets the scene for the whole campaign here.
December 1944. Sélestat controls the roads feeding the German 19th Army. American infantry fight block by block, pushing tanks through roadblocks under fire to force the river crossings.
An American M4A4 Sherman stands at the town gate, where American and French forces broke into the Alsace wine country. You stand at the tank, on the ground its crews crossed.
On Hill 351 — "Bloody Hill" — Able Company is cut off in the village below. Out of ammunition and surrounded, the survivors are captured and interrogated by Himmler himself.
House by house, the village is destroyed overnight; by dawn it is rubble on fire. One of the most completely ruined villages of the entire campaign.
26 January 1945. Lieutenant Audie Murphy climbs onto a burning tank destroyer, alone, and turns its gun on German infantry at ten yards. Wounded, he holds the line, then counterattacks — the action that earned him the Medal of Honor. You stand where it happened.
The "Alsatian Verdun." Three armies fight street to street through frozen snow as the town changes hands again and again. When the line finally breaks, the road to the Rhine opens.
Cancellation
Free cancellation up to 24 hours before the experience starts, for a full refund.
Know before you go
- Pickup
- Pickup is included for everyone.
- Ticket type
- Mobile or paper ticket accepted
- Operated by
- On the Front Tours
- Service animals allowed
- Not recommended for travelers with spinal injuries
- Not recommended for pregnant travelers
- Not recommended for travelers with poor cardiovascular health
- Suitable for all physical fitness levels
How it compares in Freiburg
- Its from-price is 845% above the median of the 46 experiences we list in Freiburg.
- It is longer than most of them.
- The operator lists free cancellation on it.
About Freiburg
Freiburg is a sunny university city at the edge of the Black Forest, with a red sandstone minster, streams in its streets and a medieval old town.
Freiburg im Breisgau lies in the south-west corner of Germany, near the borders with France and Switzerland, at the foot of the Black Forest. Its minster, a Gothic church of red sandstone with an openwork spire, rises above a market square where traders sell produce, flowers and long red sausages. Little channels called Bächle run through the old town's streets, and the medieval gates of Martinstor and Schwabentor still stand.
Top-ranked sights in Freiburg: Freiburg Cathedral (Freiburger Münster), Freiburg im Breisgau.
