Waterloo, WWI & Band of Brothers River Cruise

Mat McLachlan’s 2027 Signature Cruise is an eight-day river cruise through Holland and Belgium aboard AmaWaterways’ new AmaSofia, sailing roundtrip from Amsterdam September 18–25, 2027. It is the only battlefield tour Mat McLachlan will personally escort in 2027. The itinerary covers three wars in a single sailing — Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo (1815), the WWI Ypres Salient, and Operation Market Garden, the 1944 airborne campaign behind Band of Brothers and A Bridge Too Far — with four dedicated battlefield days and anniversary commemorations on the actual sites.

This is the trip Mat McLachlan blocks his calendar for. He runs battlefield tours all over the world, but he personally escorts only one each year — and 2027 is this one. Three wars, two countries, eight days, one ship. If you’ve ever wanted to do Waterloo, the Western Front, and the WWII airborne campaign in a single sustained trip with one of the people who actually wrote books on these battlefields, this is the year.

You sail aboard the AmaSofia, AmaWaterways’ new ship launching in 2026, roundtrip out of Amsterdam. Four of the eight days are dedicated battlefield days. The other days are the kind of luxury river cruise that does Holland and Belgium right — Amsterdam canals, the medieval Hanseatic town of Kampen, Utrecht with the option to bike to a moated castle, Ghent with the choice between battlefields and the old town.

The Ypres Salient day is the WWI one. Menin Gate — 54,896 Commonwealth soldiers with no known grave, all of them lost in this small patch of Belgium. Tyne Cot, the largest Commonwealth cemetery in the world, with about 12,000 graves. Polygon Wood. Hill 60. The Passchendaele 1917 Museum. The trip is timed to the 110th anniversary of the Battle of Menin Road, which means you’re standing on those fields exactly when it was happening, 110 years earlier, to the day.

Waterloo is its own day. Lion’s Mound — the artificial hill they piled up over the spot where the Prince of Orange was wounded, with the staircase to the top and the panorama of the entire battlefield. The Wellington Museum in the village where Wellington wrote his dispatch the morning after. Hougoumont Farm, where the day was effectively decided. La Haye Sainte, where the King’s German Legion held out until they ran out of ammunition. The new Waterloo Memorial Museum has a 3D film that maps the whole battle out, which sounds gimmicky and isn’t.

Then come the two Band of Brothers days. Operation Market Garden was the September 1944 airborne operation behind the book, the HBO series, and the phrase “a bridge too far.” Day one follows the 101st Airborne — the Screaming Eagles, Easy Company — along Hell’s Highway out of Eindhoven, including the Airborne Museum and the Eindhoven War Cemetery. Day two is the British 1st Airborne at Arnhem and Oosterbeek — the Airborne Museum at the Hotel Hartenstein where they made their last stand, the John Frost Bridge, and the war cemetery. The whole campaign is commemorated on its 83rd anniversary, again, on the actual days.

This is the rare military-history cruise where the historian is also the brand. Mat is there every day. He runs the seminars on board between the battlefield days. He’s at dinner. He’ll answer the follow-up questions. There are limited cabins because this is a signature sailing — a few river-view rooms, a handful of suites, and the largest SS Suite at 350 square feet. If you’ve been on his battlefield tours before, this is the cruise version. If you haven’t, this is the way to start.