The Bedford Boys: One American Town’s Ultimate D-day Sacrifice. by Alex Kershaw. MJF Books, 2003. ISBN: 978-1-60671-135-4. 274 pages.
In The Bedford Boys, Alex Kershaw tells the story of one Virginia National Guard infantry company that was virtually wiped out on D-Day. Because of the extraordinary sacrifice of the small town of Bedford, Virginia, it was later chosen as the site of the National D-Day Memorial. The Bedford Boys is second- or third-rate history, a chapter or long magazine article stretched out to book length without much added.
Kershaw tells the story of the soldiers and their families struggling through the Depression and joining the National Guard for the steady employment and the camaraderie. In focusing on the human stories–so similar to millions of other stories from thousands of small blue-collar communities all over the United States, he misses the opportunity to do more valuable work. Why, in 1941, did the United States rely so heavily on geographically recruited National Guard units to fill out its ranks? As David Johnson pointed out in Fast Tanks and Heavy Bombers, the problems of mass mobilization dominated American military thinking between the world wars. The United States had successfully recruited a mass army between 1861 and 1865 but had then botched it badly in 1898.
Early in World War I, the British Army had recruited “pals battalions” of young men from small villages, schools, or even single factories as a way to encourage enlistment prior to the imposition of conscription. The results were devastating when those same battalions were cut down in waves by German machine guns on the western front. Because casualties in war are so disproportionately distributed, recruiting infantry units from small communities can devastate individual communities. The United States had experienced the same phenomenon in the Civil War. Nevertheless, military planners viewed rapid recruitment and induction as their primary challenge without much thought for the social effects. Combined with America’s militia history and sensitivities over states’ rights, the National Guard provided a convenient solution.
The results were devastating for small towns with high National Guard participation, and none more so than Bedford. Company A of the 116th Infantry Regiment was assigned to the first “suicide” wave at Omaha Beach. Not one soldier from the company commander’s landing team returned home. In fact, it is likely that all died within the first ten minutes of the landing. Thirty-seven young men from Bedford, Virginia were serving in Company A on June 6, 1944. Twenty-two died in the Normandy campaign. Only six of those who actually made it to Omaha Beach also made it home. None of the survivors served as a rifleman throughout the campaign–their casualty rate was 100%.
James W. Vizzard 