Bedford

On the last day of my week-long car trip I was in Virginia and went to two reverential sites in south central Virginia (plus the UVA campus where two of my children were born and I earned a law degree in my late-thirties) that defined our country.  The first was Bedford, a small farming community of 2500 souls where unknown to its inhabitants, in a terrible half-hour on Omaha Beach in Normandy on June 6, 1944, D-Day, twenty of their sons were cut down in the first wave of the Allied assault on Hitler's Fortress Europa.  It would be a full month before the residents of this sleepy town would know, in three terrible days in July when the War Department released casualty lists from the battle and sent telegrams to the affected families that their sons, husbands, brothers, and fathers had been among the 80% carnage rate of the first wave on that beach during the assault, the true cost of our freedom.

That was a different generation, a breed hardened as children who often went hungry during the Great Depression where 25% of Americans were out of work, and payment for services and goods were done in a barter economy.  My grandfather in Colorado, a dentist, took chickens in payment for dental work in his small farming community there, Doc Fox, and for all I know and highly suspect, no payment at all, only a promise, very often fulfilled later, or not.

This is the America I love.  When I was a young boy, practically everyone's household had a veteran of WW2, tightlipped, many having seen the elephant, like my father did in the Pacific War, learning there in the crucible that having to depend unthinkingly and instantaneously upon boys from Brooklyn, Birmingham, Boise and Bath for their very survival, that American greatness depended upon cooperation with all other Americans who were there and learned the same lesson, leaving out the lunatic fringe who never went which unfortunately, we see influential in a commanding way as "victims" today.

Heroes, those twenty two or more men from Bedford, (more Bedford Boys died during the Bocage Campaign in Normandy).  The National D-Day Memorial is there in Bedford, symbolizing American greatness, belying the notion of American Carnage as espoused recently by people who never knew or forgot our greatness.

In Bedford, Virginia

Yesterday was the 75th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy, which was a brilliant success, albeit a hard fought battle involving close to ten thousand casualties and over a thousand deaths for the Americans alone, and in retrospect, it was a close thing; many things could have gone wrong and changed the outcome perhaps.  In Bedford, Virginia, resides the National D-Day Memorial.

Why Bedford, a small out-of-the-way town in rural Virginia?  From Stephen Ambrose's book D-Day, p.328: "About 60% of the men of Company A came from one town, Bedford, VA: for Bedford, the first 15 minutes at Omaha was an unmitigated disaster.  ... all the Germans around the heavily defended Vierville draw concentrated their fire on Company A.  When the ramps on the Higgins boats dropped, the Germans just poured the machine-gun, artillery, and mortar fire on them.  It was slaughter.  Of the 200+ men of the company, only a couple of dozen survived, and virtually all of them were wounded."

Can you imagine the dreadful rumors that swept through this small, thighs-knit farming community in the days after the well-publicized lands in France?  Especially after the first few Western Union bicycle messengers pulled up in front of residences in town and delivered telegrams to the households, a sure sign of a death in the family or a missing-in-action notification during the war.

These heroes who never returned home again, the vast majority of the men who left that community for the war, most of them lost in the first hour  of the greatest military enterprise in world history that literally saved world civilization, are called the Bedford Boys.  Freedom involves great and noble sacrifice sometimes, far from home and loved ones.

75 years ago today...

...the greatest military endeavor in history was undertaken and it succeeded after a ferocious fight and it literally saved world civilization.  On June 6, 1944, American, British and Canadian forces stormed ashore on five Normandy beaches, catching the defending Germans by surprise and by gaining a lodgment on that Longest Day, put a crack in Hitler's Fortress Europa, a growing fissure that a summer of desperate fighting by the mighty German military machine (two thirds of it was fighting the Soviets in the east, thankfully) that the Germans couldn't stanch and seal off or rebuff.  (The killing ground on Omaha beach.)

On Omaha Beach 1,000 GIs were killed that day trying to get ashore, yet succeeding waves of Americans continued to enter the deadly maelstrom and the day and the beach was won, by a thread.  On Utah beach to the right more effect was achieved the naval bombardment and a bombing run by the Army Air Force and the troops met light resistance and pushed on inland.  On the left the three Commonwealth beaches, Gold, Juno and Sword, were being contested and won by the Allies.  (The Canadians coincidentally aimed their initial thrust at this unique stand-alone house on Juno Beach, now known as the Canada House.)

Virtually every single father of the friends I had as a boy was a WWII veteran, whether they saw action or not, they served. My uncles served in the Mediterranean, the Philippines, the vast Pacific and my father served on two hard-won islands on the road to Tokyo.  (A lonely statue in Normandy a couple of miles off Gold beach of a weary British soldier resting at the end of the fighting on the Longest Day, marking the furthest point inland the Allies reached that day.)

My mother left her home in a small Colorado farming town on the plains as a teenager and went to Sn Diego (and met my father before he was shipped off overseas) to help build airplanes.  The Greatest Generation.  (Quiet reigns at the Canadian cemetery in Normandy as hushed visitors visit the gravestones of fallen Allied heroes; the American cemetery overlooks Omaha beach and the British cemeteries are scattered about France but the biggest one in Normandy is in Bayeux, largely still looking as it did, a Norman medieval town, because it was the largest city seized by the Allies on that day, the largest city, Caen, took all summer to acquire and it was a pile of rubble when finally taken.)

Normandy

Seventy five years ago, on June 6, 1944, the Allied forces (ABC--Americans, British and Canadians ) landed on five D-Day beaches and wrenched back Europe into light from the darkness it had descended into under Hitler.  Starting closest to Paris, on the most direct line into the heart of Germany to end the scourge of Nazism was Sword beach (british), Juno beach (Canadian), Gold Beach (British), Omaha beach (American) and on the Cotentin peninsula, Utah beach (American).  (Desperate moments on Omaha beach 75 years ago.)

The British were supposed to take Caen, the Norman capital with its important road junctions out of the confining bocage country and into open tank country, on the first day but they failed to do so and hard fighting lay ahead for the rest of the summer in Normandy as German armored reinforcements steadily came on to be engaged in a stalemate by the British and Canadians as the Americans loaded up a "right punch" to finally break out of Normandy at the end of August.  Certainly Operation Overlord was no sure thing, it was a close thing perhaps, there was no Plan B if the landings failed, and what I discerned from tramping over the beaches for two days was how far apart the beaches were and how, with a little luck and a better performance by the Luftwaffe, the Germans might have exploited the initial gaps between the five beachheads and driven the Allies into the sea in piecemeal fashion.  (The long walk in from the low tide point on Gold beach.)

The most success was had at Gold beach as the British Green Howards drove almost to Bayeux the first day and established a firm lodgment with some depth, although not as far inland as the plans called for.  The three Allied Airborne units sowed confusion in the German rear and prevented coherent counterattacks on the beaches, and the Americans poured ashore on Utah beach where they met negligible resistance thanks to an effective naval and air bombing that worked as planned there alone amongst the five beaches.  (A Green Howard at rest on the tip of the spear on the evening of the Longest Day.)

Tragedy ensued on Omaha beach as the first wave was slaughtered, and off Juno beach as SS troopers systematically executed Canadian POWs in cold blood at Ardenne Abbey.  But our forces prevailed and it was very poignant to spend two days walking in the footsteps of heroes and giants on the beaches and battlefields and in the cemeteries there.  (The Price. The Canadian cemetery, one of many Allied cemeteries in Normandy.)

 

Bayeux

Bayeux in Normandy, France, is the town from which King William the Conquerer launched his invasion of England in 1066 which culminated in his victory over King Harold at the Battle of Hastings.  In town is a famous 950 year-old tapestry, 70 yards long and consisting of a few dozen sewn cloth panels of thread, linen and wool depicting the events of that momentous year from the victor's viewpoint.

It's a beautiful medieval village with narrow, winding streets, some paved with cobblestones, with joined buildings just past the narrow sidewalks which give the byways a canyon-like appearance. Residents engage in the very French way of life by buying food or wine for that night rom open-front stores on their way home from work, walking most likely.

A farmers market comes to the public square every weekend top provide whatever else the residents might need, because it sells everything from clothing to live fowls to fresh fish to wines and cheeses or even cooked foods.  My two friends and I were there to visit the five D-Day beaches nearby on this 75th-year anniversary of that stupendous battle.

Bayeux mostly bears no scars from that battle which raged in Normandy all summer during 1944, because it was captured intact by the Allies in the first week of fighting before it had a chance to be devastated by the shelling conducted by both sides during their battles that demolished many Norman towns and villages.  In town we enjoyed evening meals in local restaurants, nighttime views of the town's tremendous chapel, morning forays along the main street in search of coffee and afternoon walks past the butcher shops, produce shops, pastry shops and fish shops lining the business district.

Juno

Rhea and Eric's plans for their trip to Normandy in the spring included a full day tour, escorted by a sought-after personal guide, of the two American D-Day beaches, Omaha (the really famous one) and Utah.  There were three other beach landings that day in history, Gold and Sword by the British sandwiched around Juno by the Canadians, quaintly referred to by local guides as the "Commonwealth" beaches.  (Omaha Beach.)

My two friends indicated an interest to their British guide in touring those beaches the subsequent day, and he gave them the names of other guides who might accommodate them on short notice (personal tours are locked up months in advance, especially since this year is the 75th anniversary of the landings).  These guides when contacted all lauded my friends as being the rare Americans who showed interest in the British and Canadian beaches, or even knowledge of the fact that there were other beaches involved in D-Day beyond Omaha and Utah.  (Juno Beach.)

My friends locked in the second personal tour.  There's so much to do and so many places to see in Normandy, where the fighting raged all summer in 1944 before the Americans broke out of the bocage country at the end of August and unlocked the German defensive containment of the Allied lodgment on the Cotentin Peninsula, that an overview, with an emphasis in depth on the British and Canadian beaches is warranted, even for Americans.  (Utah Beach.)

Meanwhile, I pondered the invite to come along extended by my two friends.  As Eric the journalist put it to me--If not now, when?  (Sword Beach.)