Nestled in the shadows of the Blue Ridge Mountains, the small town of Bedford, Virginia is home to the National D-Day Memorial. A town of just 6,500 residents, Bedford would seem to be an odd location to commemorate the most important day of the 20th century. Bedford is nearly 4,000 miles from the beaches of Normandy and feels equally distant from America’s great “Arsenals of Democracy”. Why then does Bedford have the honor of hosting the memorial? Because they earned it.
Most of Bedford’s sons were part of A Company, 116th Infantry, 29th Infantry Division, and on the morning of June 6, 1944, they were to be part of the first wave landing on Omaha Beach. From the moment Normandy was selected as the location for D-Day, commanders dreaded what would happen at Omaha Beach. The only sand beach along a 40km section of Normandy coast, the Germans knew any Normandy landing would have to include Omaha Beach, and it was defended accordingly. Anyone who’s seen the film Saving Private Ryan, is already familiar with the carnage that befell the first waves of men landing at Omaha Beach, and unfortunately the “Bedford Boys” were no exception.
For most of them their fates were sealed the second they climbed into their Higgins Boat. Landing on an isolated section of Omaha Beach, with no other allied troops in the area, the Germans were able to concentrate their fire on A Company. Stephen Ambrose probably put it best when he wrote, “…for Bedford, the first fifteen minutes at Omaha were an unmitigated disaster.” Facing concentrated machine gun, mortar, and artillery fire, Company A was decimated. Bedford, which only had 3,200 residents in 1944, lost 20 of its prized sons in just a few minutes. The town had suffered the worse per-capita casualties of any community in the United States.
Once you learn about the town’s immense sacrifice, it’s no longer a question of why it was selected to host the memorial. While the memorial would undoubtedly attract more visitors in a larger city, the small-town atmosphere helps give context to the sacrifices made on D-Day. World War II is often discussed at a high level, and understandably so. Its scale was so immense, that it can be hard to contextualize the sacrifices made by individuals or communities. But walking through Bedford you can get a sense of how a global conflict impacted the lives of people in this rural corner of Virginia. Walking down Main Street in Bedford, you pass by Green’s Drug Store, where in July 1944 a Western Union teletype began receiving the first messages from the War Department. Surveying the town, it’s not hard to imagine the tragedy that unfolded, as those messages started being delivered to loved ones. After wandering around Bedford for a while, you might conclude that this was the perfect spot for the memorial.
While the memorial’s location helps convey a local perspective of D-Day, the memorial itself is global in nature, as it should be. Most people think of D-Day as an invasion carried out primarily by American and British forces, but the reality is more interesting. The United States and Great Britain were certainly the main contributors, but 13 different nations participated in the allied invasion of Normandy. The invasion was a global demonstration of what General Eisenhower called, “the fury of an aroused democracy”.
Perhaps the best example of the global coalition present on D-Day, was the naval armada. 2,727 ships steamed across the English Channel, a fleet consisting of vessels from 12 nations: United States, United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Poland, Norway, France, Holland, Belgium, Greece, and South Africa. At the head of the fleet, protecting the minesweepers, were three destroyers. At the tip of the spear was the Polish destroyer Slazak, followed by the British destroyer HMS Middleton, and the Norwegian destroyer Svenner. Probably not the combination of nations you were expecting.
I’m not sure if Poland leading the way was meant to be symbolic, but that’s certainly how I view it. Poland was attacked by Germany in September 1939, the first country invaded by Hitler’s Nazi war machine. Five years later a Polish destroyer was leading the allied armada toward Normandy. As Stephen Ambrose put it, “What Hitler had sown he was now to reap. The free peoples of the world were sending the best of their young men and the products of their industry to liberate Western Europe and crush him and his Nazi Party.” Having Slazak lead the charge, seems to have been a most appropriate symbolic gesture, even if it wasn’t designed that way.
Symbolism aside, this was the moment the allies had been preparing for since the United States entered the war. Germany knew the invasion of Europe was coming, it was just a matter of when. Germany had spent the better part of 4 years building up the Atlantic Wall, an effort that consumed a large portion of its resources. Hitler understood the stakes when he said, “The destruction of the enemy’s landing attempt means more than a purely local decision on the Western Front. It is the sole decisive factor in the whole conduct of the war and hence its final result.”
A successful landing by the allies would all but end the war in Europe. Once entrenched on the continent, America’s “Arsenal of Democracy”, protected by the world’s oceans, would eventually overwhelm the Nazis. Germany’s only hope was to throw the invasion back into the sea, and it didn’t happen. In hindsight it seems obvious that D-Day would succeed. Hitler’s Atlantic Wall was a colossal investment, but it essentially relied on WW1 tactics, a glorified version of trench warfare.
While the allied invasion succeeded, it came at cost. No exact figures are known, but it’s estimated that the allies sustained in excess of 10,000 casualties. At the National D-Day Memorial there are 4,414 bronze plaques, each one representing an allied serviceman killed on D-Day. Precise casualty figures will never be known, but regardless of the exact number, the human cost of that day was extremely high. The cost of freedom.
Given its historical significance, it goes without saying that I think everyone could benefit from a visit to the National D-Day Memorial. If you’ve been keeping track of my rants, this is another destination I would include on the list of mandatory field trips for America’s youth. Take an hour to reflect on what happened at Omaha Beach, and kids might have a different perspective on their current “problems”. Just saying.
National D-Day Memorial | Website of the National D-Day Memorial Foundation (dday.org)
Fun Fact: Bedford, Virginia is located near the Peaks of Otter in the Blue Ridge Mountains, which Thomas Jefferson was convinced were the highest peaks on the continent. I suspect his Virginia pride was hurt just a little bit when Merriweather Lewis told him about the Rocky Mountains for the first time. Jefferson’s Poplar Forest retreat is roughly 20 miles from the National D-Day Memorial, it’s definitely worth touring if you venture out to the D-Day Memorial. It’s not as cool as Monticello, but anything Jefferson related is worth seeing.