75 Years Ago

[NW Mailing List]

Thanks for sharing Ken. A very touching tribute. Mike Weeks Seattle

On Thu, Jun 6, 2019 at 8:02 AM NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>
wrote:

> "You are about to embark on the great crusade, toward which we have
> striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you."
> Those are the words that opened General Dwight D. Eisenhower's Order of
> the Day for June 6, 1944. This was distributed the day before to the troops
> massed in England who had been awaiting the day for months.
>
> These troops had been preparing for months for what by far the largest
> naval armada ever, with well over 4,000 ships and 1,200 planes from
> England, Canada, and America to deliver the troops to Normandy. Supplies,
> arms, and weapons, the product of the massive American industry had been
> built, packaged, shipped, and now were preparing to support this massive
> operation.
>
> The Norfolk and Western and Virginian both had huge parts in this
> operation; trains loaded with war materials and troops had been crowding
> the rails for months. Have no doubt about it, without America's railroads,
> this massive movement could not have happened. Both N&W and Virginian
> directly served the Port of Norfolk, a major east coast embarkation point.
>
> The N&W also has the distinction of serving the small town of Bedford,
> Virginia. Bedford, a town with a population in 1944 approximately 3,200,
> was formerly known as Liberty. On June 6, 1944, Bedford acquired a
> distinction in the history books that a place should ever have. The small
> town of Bedford is believed to have lost more men, per capita, than any
> town in American on the beaches of Normandy. Thirty-four men from this
> small town were part of the invasion, 23 did not come back. These men, as
> well as men from all over Southwest Virginia were part of the great crusade
> to liberate Europe from the Nazi tyranny as part of the 29th Division. Many
> had left Bedford by train to go to basic training.
>
> Early in the morning of June 6, thousands of paratroopers began dropping
> into France. The airborne troops suffered from confusion, missed landing
> zones and scattered groups. At 5:30 am on June 6, the naval guns began
> their bombardment. An hour later, the landing craft began their way to the
> beach, no sooner than the ramps dropped on the landing craft, the hail of
> German machine gunfire was intense, many men never made it off the landing
> craft alive. For our readers, to see and feel  what it might have been like
> are encouraged to watch the first 20 minutes of the movie "Saving Private
> Ryan." The people who actually experience the invasion have told me it is
> the closest depiction to what they saw and experienced that morning. It is,
> simply terrifying and horrific. Put yourself back at age 18 or so, By day's
> end, some 159,000 troops were ashore in Normandy. On June 6, alone, 4,414
> Allied troops died, of those, 2,501 were Americans. The estimates of
> wounded or missing on both sides are almost impossible to determine. German
> casualties are also nearly impossible to calculate.
>
> On Monday, July 17 in Green's Drugstore in Bedford, the 21-year old
> telegrapher, Elizabeth Teass began her regular work day by sending the
> message to Western Union that she was ready for messages. Western Union
> returned a message saying that Bedford had casualties. The telegrams
> started coming in, one after another. All of the messages began with the
> heartbreaking line "The Secretary of War desires me to express his deep
> regret that your…"
>
> Over the next few years, the "Bedford Boys" would begin to trickle home
> via the Norfolk and Western, arriving in the flag draped coffin, carefully
> unloaded from the baggage cars of the trains.
>
> Today, we offer tribute to the “Bedford Boys” and all those troops who
> paid the ultimate sacrifice during World War II to save the world. If, by
> chance, you see a veteran somewhere, regardless of when or where, please,
> go over and offer your thanks for their service.
>
> Almost eerily, the Norfolk and Western Magazine Cover of September 1942
> depicted Bedford:
>
> With the caption: THE SCENE ON THE FRONT COVER, showing a peaceful
> community sheltered by protecting hills, seems to us to typify the America
> we know and love . . . to typify some of the possessions we are fighting to
> preserve in a war-inflamed world. The church spire pointing toward the sky,
> sunlight spreading its warmth across simple homes, woodland stretches
> unmarred by the devastation of bombs, a quiet valley where people may live
> calmly and happily, sharing the blessings of freedom... this is America. We
> must sacrifice to keep these things, and the four freedoms of common
> humanity set forth in the article on page 418.
> The community pictured might be any one of a thousand similar American
> towns. It is, in fact, a scene along the Norfolk and Western-Bedford, Va.,
> with the cloud-crested Peaks of Otter rising in the background.
>
> Ken Miller
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