The Town That Died on D Day

[82Rigger]

The small town of Bedford, Virginia (population 3,000) awoke on June 6, 1944, to the news of the Allied landings in France.

Bedford's teletype operator jumped when the machine began to clatter, and her heart sank as she read the first words:

"We regret to inform you..."

One of Bedford's own has been lost.

But the chatter of the teletype didn't stop.
Over and over came those heartbreaking words.

"We regret to inform you..."

"We regret to inform you..."

"We regret to inform you..."


Among the thousands of soldiers going ashore in France were 34 men from the town of Bedford, aboard Empire Javelin , a British troopship. Nineteen of them were killed in the first minutes of combat, when their landing craft dropped them into the water off Normandy. Two more were killed later in the day from gunshot wounds. No other town in the U.S. endured a greater one-day loss.

Company A, 116th Infantry Regiment, 29th Infantry Division, were part of the first wave at Omaha Beach in WWII. Initially, 103 of them left the small town of Bedford, Va.-now the site of the national D-Day memorial-when the local National Guard was called up in 1940; 34 were still with the company on D-Day. Of these, 19 died in a matter of minutes and three more perished in the Normandy campaign.

Men lost ranged from the company commander, Captain Taylor N. Fellers, from a wealthy Bedford family, to Frank Draper Jr., a fine athlete and soldier from the wrong side of the tracks. Long-time National Guardsman John Wilkes died as the company's top sergeant, while Earl Parker left behind a daughter he never saw. Both Holback brothers and Ray Stevens died, while Ray's twin Roy Stevens was one of the handful of survivors.

Just a memory of one small American town that went to war and died on Omaha Beach.