The National D-Day Memorial is a war memorial located in Bedford, Virginia. It serves as the national memorial for AmericanD-Day veterans. However, its scope is international in that it states, "In Tribute to the valor, fidelity and sacrifice of Allied Forces on D-Day, June 6, 1944" and commends all Allied Armed Forces during the D-Day invasion of Normandy, France on June 6, 1944, during World War II.[1]
The memorial, bordering the Blue Ridge Mountains in southwestern Virginia, is an area of over 50 acres (200,000m2) that overlooks the town of Bedford. It officially opened on June 6, 2001, with 15,000 people present, including President George W. Bush.[2] About 60,000 people have visited the memorial each year. Of those, more than half are from outside of Virginia.
The "Bedford Boys" and the location of the memorial
Thirty-four Virginia National Guard soldiers from Company A, 116th Infantry Regiment, 29th Infantry Division, based in the town of Bedford prior to the war, were part of D-Day. Company A was decimated within hours of landing, and nineteen of the men were killed during the first day of the invasion. Four more died during the rest of the Normandy campaign, two of them from other 116th companies. The town and the "Bedford Boys" proportionately suffered the greatest losses of any American town during the campaign, thus inspiring the United States Congress to establish the D-Day memorial in Bedford.[3][4]
The Bedford Boys included three sets of brothers: twins Roy and Ray Stevens, with Ray killed during the landing while Roy survived; Clyde and Jack Powers, with Jack killed and Clyde wounded but surviving; and Bedford and Raymond Hoback, both killed.[5] The losses by the soldiers from Bedford were chronicled in the best-selling book The Bedford Boys by Alex Kershaw, and helped inspire the movie Saving Private Ryan.[6] The movie's director, Steven Spielberg, helped fund the memorial, including funding for the creation of the Arnold M. Spielberg Theater, in honor of his father, a World War II veteran.[7]
The National D-Day Memorial Foundation
National D-Day Memorial pool with landing craft, American soldier, and German beach barrier
The National D-Day Memorial Foundation is a non-profit 501(c)(3)organization that had its beginnings as a small committee in 1988 with the prospect of building a memorial to dedicate the sacrifices made by the Allied Forces on D-Day. The idea had been looked at, but support for its completion did not exist prior to the fiftieth anniversary of the invasion in 1994.[8]
Presently, the foundation is headquartered in Bedford. After 8 months of 2 co-presidents, In May 2013, April Cheek-Messier was named the president of The National D-Day Memorial Foundation. It charges itself with expanding the memorial, such as when it listed on plaques the name of every one of the 4,413 Allied soldiers who died in the invasion, the most complete list of its kind anywhere in the world. The memorial is currently trying to one better itself with its attempt to compile a list of every service member that participated in Operations Overlord and Neptune (Overlord was the code name of the actual invasion, whereas Neptune was code for getting the troops across the English Channel for the invasion).[9] The organization also involves itself in assisting veterans and their families such as undertaking the search for family members of soldiers whose personal belongings have been found after years of being lost.[10]
Fundraising and building the memorial
Detail from the memorial
Fundraising and building the memorial took approximately seven years of planning and approximately $25 million to complete. In 1994, the town of Bedford donated 11 acres (45,000m2) of land to the memorial. The foundation purchased additional acreage, bringing the total size of the memorial to 50+ acres. In 1997, the foundation received a one million dollar donation from Charles Schulz, who, with his wife, volunteered to head a fundraising campaign for the memorial.[11]
According to the National D-Day Memorial Foundation, the memorial is a continuum of three distinct plazas which follow on a time line. The first plaza, Reynolds Garden, symbolizes the planning and preparation activities for the invasion through the execution of the order for the invasion. It is in the shape of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force combat patch. The second level, Gray Plaza, reflects the landing and fighting stages of the invasion. It includes what is called the invasion pool with beach obstacles in the water, sculptures of soldiers struggling ashore, and a representation of the Higgins craft used for the invasion. This section includes intermittent jets of water spurting from the pool replicating the sights and sounds of sporadic gunfire. The names of the United States' losses appear on the west necrology wall of the central plaza, the rest of the Allies' losses on the east necrology wall. In the spirit of Dwight D. Eisenhower's one-team command philosophy for the AEF, no other distinctions are made.[1] The last and uppermost plaza, Estes Plaza, celebrates victory and includes the Overlord Arch and the twelve flags of those Allied nations that served in the Allied Expeditionary Force. The Overlord Arch represents the victory of Operation Overlord and bears the invasion date of June 6, 1944 in its height at 44 feet (13m) and 6 inches (150mm) tall.[1]
Tourism
The memorial is open Sunday through Saturday 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM. During the months of January and February and part of March, the invasion pool is drained for maintenance. In addition to the memorial's static displays, on several weekends throughout the year, the memorial hosts events relating to remembering World War II. Examples of such events have included a weekend long encampment of World War II re-enactors and a World War II-style religious mass in addition to Memorial Day, Veterans Day, and D-Day activities that occur annually.[1]
Bedford is an incorporated town and former independent city located within Bedford County in the U.S. state of Virginia. It serves as the county seat of Bedford County. As of the 2020 census, the population was 6,657. It is part of the Lynchburg Metropolitan Statistical Area.
A cenotaph is an empty tomb or a monument erected in honour of a person or group of people whose remains are elsewhere or have been lost. It can also be the initial tomb for a person who has since been reinterred elsewhere. Although the majority of cenotaphs honour individuals, many noted cenotaphs are also dedicated to the memories of groups of individuals, such as the lost soldiers of a country or of an empire.
The Normandy landings were the landing operations and associated airborne operations on 6 June 1944 of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during the Second World War. Codenamed Operation Neptune and often referred to as D-Day, it is the largest seaborne invasion in history. The operation began the liberation of France, and the rest of Western Europe, and laid the foundations of the Allied victory on the Western Front.
A beachhead is a temporary line created when a military unit reaches a landing beach by sea and begins to defend the area as other reinforcements arrive. Once a large enough unit is assembled, the invading force can begin advancing inland. The term is sometimes used interchangeably with bridgehead and lodgement. Beachheads were important in many military actions; examples include operations such as Operation Neptune during World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.
Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force was the headquarters of the Commander of Allied forces in northwest Europe, from late 1943 until the end of World War II. US General Dwight D. Eisenhower was the commander in SHAEF throughout its existence. The position itself shares a common lineage with Supreme Allied Commander Europe and Atlantic, but they are different titles.
A war memorial is a building, monument, statue, or other edifice to celebrate a war or victory, or to commemorate those who died or were injured in a war.
Exercise Tiger, or Operation Tiger, which took place in April 1944 on Slapton Sands in Devon, was one of a series of large-scale rehearsals for the D-Day invasion of Normandy. Coordination and communication problems resulted in friendly fire injuries during the exercise, and an Allied convoy positioning itself for the landing was attacked by E-boats of Nazi Germany's Kriegsmarine, resulting in the deaths of at least 749 American servicemen.
Ver-sur-Mer is a commune in the Calvados department and Normandy region of north-western France. It is situated at the eastern end of Gold Beach between Arromanches and Courseulles. The town lies 20 km north-west of Caen and 14 km north-east of Bayeux.
The landing craft, vehicle, personnel (LCVP) or Higgins boat was a landing craft used extensively by the Allied forces in amphibious landings in World War II. Typically constructed from plywood, this shallow-draft, barge-like boat could ferry a roughly platoon-sized complement of 36 men to shore at 12 knots. Men generally entered the boat by climbing down a cargo net hung from the side of their troop transport; they exited by charging down the boat's lowered bow ramp.
The National WWII Museum, formerly known as The NationalD-Day Museum, is a military history museum located in the Central Business District of New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S., on Andrew Higgins Drive between Camp Street and Magazine Street. The museum focuses on the contribution made by the United States to Allied victory in World War II. Founded in 2000, it was later designated by the U.S. Congress as America's official National WWII Museum in 2004. The museum is a Smithsonian Institution affiliated museum, as part of the Smithsonian Institution's outreach program. The mission statement of the museum emphasizes the American experience in World War II.
The National Museum of the Pacific War is located in Fredericksburg, Texas, the boyhood home of Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz. Nimitz served as commander in chief, United States Pacific Fleet (CinCPAC), and was soon afterward named commander in chief, Pacific Ocean Areas, during World War II. The six-acre site includes the Admiral Nimitz Gallery, which is housed in the old Nimitz Hotel and tells the story of Nimitz beginning with his life as a young boy through his naval career as well as the evolution of the old hotel.
The United States Navy Memorial is a memorial in Washington, D.C. honoring those who have served or are currently serving in the Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard, and the Merchant Marine.
Operation Overlord was the codename for the Battle of Normandy, the Allied operation that launched the successful liberation of German-occupied Western Europe during World War II. The operation was launched on 6 June 1944 (D-Day) with the Normandy landings. A 1,200-plane airborne assault preceded an amphibious assault involving more than 5,000 vessels. Nearly 160,000 troops crossed the English Channel on 6 June, and more than two million Allied troops were in France by the end of August.
The Indiana World War Memorial Plaza is an urban feature and war memorial located in downtown Indianapolis, Indiana, United States, originally built to honor the veterans of World War I. It was conceived in 1919 as a location for the national headquarters of the American Legion and a memorial to the state's and nation's veterans.
Alex Kershaw is an English journalist, public speaker and the author of several best-selling books, including The Liberator, The First Wave, The Bedford Boys and The Longest Winter.
The International Museum of World War II was a nonprofit museum devoted to World War II located in Natick, Massachusetts, a few miles west of Boston. It was formed over a period of more than 50 years by its founder, Kenneth W. Rendell, one of the world's premier dealers in autographs, letters and manuscripts, who has earned international renown as an authenticator of historic artifacts. The museum's collections documented the events of the war, from the signing of the Treaty of Versailles ending World War I to the Nuremberg and Tokyo war crimes trials. The museum's goal was to preserve the reality of the history of World War II and to provide an educational experience of the lessons to be learned. In 2016, the Museum of World War II became The International Museum of World War II to reflect its being the only museum in the world with an international collection of letters, documents, and artifacts.
Camp Griffiss was a US military base in the United Kingdom during and after World War II. Constructed within the grounds of Bushy Park in Middlesex, England, it served as the European Headquarters for the United States Army Air Forces from July 1942 to December 1944. From here Dwight D. Eisenhower planned the D-Day invasion. Most of the camp's huts had been removed by the early 1960s, and a memorial tablet now stands on the site.
William Garfield Dabney was an African-American resident of Roanoke, Virginia, who served in World War II. He was awarded the French Legion of Honor for his actions during the invasion of Normandy. Notably, Dabney — one of the last known surviving soldier from the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion, the only all-black unit in the D-Day landings — did not receive the honor until the sixty-fifth anniversary of D-Day – 18 days shy of his eighty-fifth birthday.
Liberation Route Europe is an international remembrance trail that connects the main regions along the advance of the Western Allied Forces toward the liberation of Europe and final stage of the Second World War. The route started in 2008 as a Dutch regional initiative in the Arnhem-Nijmegen area and then developed into a transnational route that was officially inaugurated in Arromanches on June 6, 2014, during the Normandy D-day commemorations. The route goes from Southern England through France, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands to Berlin in Germany, then extends to the Czech Republic and Poland. The southern route starts in Italy. As a form of remembrance tourism, LRE aims to unfold these Allied offensives of 1944 and 1945 in one narrative combining the different perspectives and points of view. By combining locations with personal stories of people who fought and suffered there, it gives visitors the opportunity to follow the Allied march and visit significant sites from war cemeteries to museums and monuments but also events and commemorations. In April 2019, Liberation Route Europe became a certified Cultural Route of the Council of Europe.
John McHugh Sr. was an American World War II veteran who participated in the D Day invasion, the Battle of Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge. He was in the 1st Infantry Division and was awarded the Silver Star and Bronze Star. The State of New York placed him in its Veterans Hall of Fame. His hometown Whitestone, New York has co-named a street after him.
↑ Searching for Family of D-Day Soldier to return Items. WSLS 10 On Your Side, reported by Angela Hatcher (February 18, 2010; Roanoke, VA; NBC affiliate, WSLS)
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