The Bedford Boys

Alpha Company, 116th Infantry Regiment, 29th Infantry Division

From the years 1941 to 1945, the United States of America lost approximately 420,000 souls (soldier and civilian alike) during the Second World War. Whether their sacrifice was to make a freer world or to advance an agenda of slavery is up to history to decide. But the immutable fact is that 420,000 American men and women laid down their lives in this conflict, and this cannot be forgotten.

Compared to Russia, China, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, its Commonwealth countries, and any other number of combatant countries, the United States’ losses were comparatively slight. But comparing the United States to itself, only the American Civil War claimed more lives than the Second World War. If one were to count the wounded and missing, the casualties increase to over one million, which brings it on par with the total casualties of the American Civil War, which is all the more staggering when one considers that the Second World War happened entirely outside of the borders of the Continental United States. And within the Continental United States, no town gave more of itself to this war than Bedford, a sleepy town in the shadow of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains.

Bedford was one of many Virginia towns with a National Guard Armory that housed a company of the 116th Infantry Regiment. Organized during the First World War from elements of the Virginia National Guard, it fought under the 29th Infantry Division with distinction during the Meuse-Argonne offensive. The Regiment’s lineage reaches all the way back to Washington’s Virginia Militia during the Seven Years’ War, though its most famous predecessor is the famed Stonewall Brigade, a nickname the Regiment bears to this day.

When America entered the Second World War, the 116th and its sister regiment, the 115th of Maryland, were combined with the newly founded 175th under the reorganized 29th Infantry Division. Though the regiment was bolstered with draftees and volunteers from across the country, the NCO corps was still entirely of the Virginia Guard, who were very conscious of the legacy that they were expected to live up to. After a period of training stateside, the division was sent to England in preparation for the largest naval invasion in recorded history.

“Operation Overlord,” as it would come to be called, divided the June 6, 1944, invasion into five landing zones, which themselves were divided amongst the Western Allies. The British were to land at Gold and Sword Beaches, the Canadians at Juno Beach, and the Americans at Omaha and Utah Beaches. General Omar Bradley was selected to draft the plan of invasion, and he chose each landing to occur with one veteran and one green Infantry division.

Omaha Beach was projected to be the landing zone with the highest resistance, which prompted General Bradley to select the crack 1st Infantry Division and green 29th Infantry Division to land. “The Big Red One” had been engaged since the landing in Morocco in November 1942 and had more recently been transferred north from the Italian Theater. The 1st’s Veteran 16th Infantry Regiment was selected alongside the 29th’s 116th to land first, and the tip of the spear was to be Alpha Company of the 116th — though they’re known far more famously by their nickname, “The Bedford Boys.”

Alpha Company was drawn from the town of Bedford and the surrounding areas, whose population sat around 3,000 in 1944. Almost every military-aged male in the town was in the Guard pre-war. Their yearly two-week musters had consisted of reenacting the battle of First Manassas wearing gray armbands against their blue-armbanded counterparts in the 115th. Now these weekend warriors were full-time soldiers, fully trained but inexperienced, and the job was theirs to be the first to hit the beach.

Given that Alpha Company bore the name of “The Bedford Boys” (not a unique naming convention in the 116th, as Golf Company, for instance, called “The Farmville Boys,” had been drawn predominantly from that town), Bedford found itself overrepresented in the company. Thirty-five men from Bedford were loaded into the first Higgins Boats to hit the beach, bereft of cover and stalked by machine guns.

Alpha Company departed from England in the early hours of June 6th with 230 men. Within 15 minutes of reaching their landing zones, all but 18 were dead or wounded. Some drowned in the English Channel when their boats were hit, never making it to the beach. Some were slaughtered like cows in pens when the loading ramps dropped and machine gun fire ripped through. Some were blown to bits by mortars and artillery fire, or picked off by sharpshooters, as there was no cover. Though later waves of the 116th arrived to better effect, Alpha Company functionally ceased to exist, and along with her went Bedford’s male population.

Of the 35 Bedford Boys who landed with Alpha Company, 19 died on June 6th. Three more would be killed later in the campaign, bringing the loss up to 22. Given the statistics available, it can be concluded that Bedford suffered a loss of 20% of its military-aged male population, proportionally equivalent to the loss that Rome suffered at Cannae. The town still bears the genetic imprint.

Whatever the dear reader’s opinion of the Second World War, I’d suggest that he find the time to visit the D-Day memorial in Bedford. When surrounded by the names of the lost, it becomes difficult if not impossible to remember anything but. Whatever the reason 420,000 Americans paid the blood price during that Mid-Century conflict, including those Bedford Boys, it was something they believed in enough for us to remember.