Saturday Diversion: The National D-Day Memorial
“That Nation which respects and honors its dead, shall ever be respected and honored itself.”
– Brevet Lieut.-Col. Edmund B. Whitman, 1868
Since the late nineteenth century, Americans at the end of May have honored and mourned all the men and women who have died while serving in the U.S. military. Although Memorial Day is often heralded as the start of summer (officially the last Monday of May since an act of Congress in 1971), it remains a solemn day for remembering the sacrifices our fellow citizens have made throughout America’s history—friends, neighbors, and family members who gave their lives defending our freedoms and way of life.
Growing up near the nation’s capital region, young people get to experience some of the most iconic war memorials and cemeteries around, including Arlington National Cemetery, the Marine Corps War Memorial (Iwo Jima), the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and national memorials to fallen soldiers in both World War I and World War II.
But for this Memorial Day post, I would like to draw attention to the newer but not to be overlooked National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, Virginia—right next to my hometown of Lynchburg, Virginia. Although the memorial was officially launched well after my younger days, it is an impressive site worth your time if you’re ever in southwestern Virginia. I took my own kids there many years ago (they’re all grown up now), and highly recommend it.
Alex Kershaw wrote an excellent book called The Bedford Boys that explains why this small town in Virginia was chosen for a national D-Day memorial: the town lost 19 men, all from Company A of the 116th Regiment of the 29th Division, in the first assault on the beaches of Normandy, plus other men in later battles. Bedford suffered the largest per capita loss of any town in America on D-Day.
For more context about the memorial and D-Day itself, here is a good selection from then President George W. Bush’s speech at the dedication of the new memorial in June 2001:
You have raised a fitting memorial to D-Day, and you have put it in just the right place—not on a battlefield of war, but in a small Virginia town, a place like so many others that we're home to the men and women who help liberate a continent.
Our presence here, 57 years removed from that event, gives testimony to how much was gained and how much was lost. What was gained that first day was a beach, and then a village, and then a country. And in time, all of Western Europe would be freed from fascism and its armies.
The achievement of Operation Overlord is nearly impossible to overstate, in its consequences for our own lives and the life of the world. Free societies in Europe can be traced to the first footprints on the first beach on June 6, 1944. What was lost on D-Day we can never measure and never forget.
When the day was over, America and her allies had lost at least 2,500 of the bravest men ever to wear a uniform. Many thousands more would die on the days that followed. They scaled towering cliffs, looking straight up into enemy fire. They dropped into grassy fields sown with land mines. They overran machine gun nests hidden everywhere, punched through walls of barbed wire, overtook bunkers of concrete and steel. The great journalist Ernie Pyle said, "It seemed to me a pure miracle that we ever took the beach at all. The advantages were all theirs, the disadvantages all ours." "And yet," said Pyle, "we got on."
A father and his son both fell during Operation Overlord. So did 33 pairs of brothers—including a boy having the same name as his hometown, Bedford T. Hoback, and his brother Raymond. Their sister, Lucille, is with us today. She has recalled that Raymond was offered an early discharge for health reasons, but he turned it down. "He didn't want to leave his brother," she remembers. "He had come over with him and he was going to stay with him." Both were killed on D-Day. The only trace of Raymond Hoback was his Bible, found in the sand. Their mother asked that Bedford be laid to rest in France with Raymond, so that her sons might always be together.
Perhaps some of you knew Gordon White, Sr. He died here just a few years ago, at the age of 95, the last living parent of a soldier who died on D-Day. His boy, Henry, loved his days on the family farm, and was especially fond of a workhorse named Major. Family members recall how Gordon just couldn't let go of Henry's old horse, and he never did. For 25 years after the war, Major was cherished by Gordon White as a last link to his son, and a link to another life.
Upon this beautiful town fell the heaviest share of American losses on D-Day—19 men from a community of 3,200, four more afterwards. When people come here, it is important to see the town as the monument itself. Here were the images these soldiers carried with them, and the thought of when they were afraid. This is the place they left behind. And here was the life they dreamed of returning to. They did not yearn to be heroes. They yearned for those long summer nights again, and harvest time, and paydays. They wanted to see Mom and Dad again, and hold their sweethearts or wives, or for one young man who lived here, to see that baby girl born while he was away.
Bedford has a special place in our history. But there were neighborhoods like these all over America, from the smallest villages to the greatest cities. Somehow they all produced a generation of young men and women who, on a date certain, gathered and advanced as one, and changed the course of history. Whatever it is about America that has given us such citizens, it is the greatest quality we have, and may it never leave us.
In some ways, modern society is very different from the nation that the men and women of D-Day knew, and it is sometimes fashionable to take a cynical view of the world. But when the calendar reads the 6th of June, such opinions are better left unspoken. No one who has heard and read about the events of D-Day could possibly remain a cynic. Army Private Andy Rooney was there to survey the aftermath. A lifetime later he would write, "If you think the world is selfish and rotten, go to the cemetery at Colleville overlooking Omaha Beach. See what one group of men did for another on D-Day, June 6, 1944."
Fifty-three hundred ships and landing craft; 1,500 tanks; 12,000 airplanes. But in the end, it came down to this: scared and brave kids by the thousands who kept fighting, and kept climbing, and carried out General Eisenhower's order of the day—nothing short of complete victory.
For us, nearly six decades later, the order of the day is gratitude. Today we give thanks for all that was gained on the beaches of Normandy. We remember what was lost, with respect, admiration and love.
A fitting tribute to all those who fought and lost their lives on D-Day—and all the men and women throughout history who have died serving our country.
Editor’s note: The Liberal Patriot newsletter will not be published on Memorial Day and will resume on Tuesday May 28.
