Memorial Day: Bedford, Virginia

[This was originally posted on May 25, 2007.  I’m posting it again, having just seen that the memorial is in dire need of funding support.  I’m in for $50.  I hope you’ll consider contributing, too.  See dday.org.]

A few weeks ago, I spent a weekend as support crew for the Smith Mountain Lake Triathlon. I mention that because it was the only reason I would ever have to travel through Bedford, Virginia. I’d never even heard the name before, and imagine that I’d never have a reason to head through it again. But I was glad I did discover it, as it is home to the National D-Day Memorial.

When I saw the sign for the Memorial, my first thought was that it was some outsized project of the local VFW or something. But no, in fact, it is the national memorial for the soliders that died on the beaches of Normandy on June 6, 1944. Why Bedford, of all places?

Like eleven other Virginia communities, Bedford provided a company of soldiers (Company A) to the 29th Infantry Division when the National Guard’s 116th Infantry Regiment was activated on 3 February 1941. Some thirty Bedford soldiers were still in that company on D-Day; several more from Bedford were in other D-Day companies, including one who, two years earlier, had been reassigned from the 116th Infantry to the First Infantry Division. Thus he had already landed in both Northern Africa and Sicily before coming ashore on D-Day at Omaha Beach with the Big Red One. Company A of the 116th Infantry assaulted Omaha Beach as part of the First Division’s Task Force O. By day’s end, nineteen of the company’s Bedford soldiers were dead. Two more Bedford soldiers died later in the Normandy campaign, as did yet another two assigned to other 116th Infantry companies. Bedford’s population in 1944 was about 3,200. Proportionally this community suffered the nation’s severest D-Day losses. Recognizing Bedford as emblematic of all communities, large and small, whose citizen-soldiers served on D-Day, Congress warranted the establishment of the National D-Day Memorial here.

The memorial itself is . . . not like most memorials. Typically, memorials reach for symbolism, and not recreation. Think of, say, the WWII and Vietnam Memorials on the Mall. This one, however, illustrated exactly what Normandy was about. Landing. Death on the beach. Death on the cliffs. I’ve traveled a lot, and seen many a military memorial, but I can’t think of the last one I saw that showed the real price that was paid by soliders. Here, in Bedford, there is a bronze sculpture of a dead solider half in the water, representing all those young men that died just as the day started. The bluntness of it surprised me. But it’s also something I appreciated. With all of the glorification of the military and combat service, I’m not sure that people really understand the real price it extracts. I give the D-Day Memorial Foundation much credit for helping illustrate that.

The other surprising thing was the recognition of all Allied soldiers. American memorials usually exclusively focus on American soldiers. In this case, however, the contributions of all Allies were recognized. It may be a small point for some, but as someone who had family fight and fall for a number of countries, it’s something I appreciate.

[I’d started this in the hope that there would be some clear way that I could tie in my very personal respect for the sacrifices of the memorialized soldiers with those of those who have died in this second Gulf War. But I’m just too angry. Every time I head through an airport and see a bunch of kids who don’t look old enough to drive but have the tell-tale haircuts of recent boot camp vintage, I careen between grief and rage. And until I find a cogent way to express that, I think I’ll just leave it at this.]