We begin our tour with your bilingual guide collecting you in an upscale vehicle at your Paris address and driving you directly (2 and ½ hours) to the Canadian National Vimy Memorial. During the drive, if you wish, our guide will share encyclopedic knowledge of events leading to the first world war, and major developments in the war preceding what transpired in April 1917 at Vimy. He can also detail the strategy employed by the Canadians and the agony of events as the battle evolved.

In addition to the memorial itself, we will visit the visitor’s center and the 3 cemeteries. We will also arrange for a guided tour of the Grange trench and forward trenches, led by one of the site’s official guides. Vimy had been captured by German forces in 1914, and in numerous subsequent assaults 150,000 French and British soldiers failed to dislodge them. That task was accomplished on April 9-12, 1917, by 4 Canadian divisions, fighting under unified command for the first time, at the cost of 3,598 lives and 7000 wounded.

After our visit at Vimy we will take a one hour break (longer, if you wish) for lunch, and then drive to Courcelette, where we will stop to view the monuments and survey terrain that was seized in fierce fighting by the Canadian 2^nd and 3^rd divisions at the cost of 7,230 men killed, wounded or missing. We then proceed past Thiepval Ridge, where the same Canadian divisions also saw action, to arrive at Beaumont-Hamel.