The Bedford Boys: One American Town’s Ultimate D-day Sacrifice

On June 6, 1944, landing craft dropped the boys from Bedford, Virginia - population 3,000 - in the shallow water off Normandy's Omaha Beach, part of the first wave of American soldiers to hit the beaches on D-Day. Within minutes nineteen were dead. No other town in American suffered a greater one-day loss. Later in the campaign, three more sons of Bedford died of gunshot wounds.