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Kershaw - The Bedford Boys

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Kershaw The Bedford Boys
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The Bedford Boys: summary, description and annotation

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On June 6, 1944, nineteen boys from Bedford, Virginiapopulation 3,000died in the first bloody minutes of D-Day when their landing craft dropped them in shallow water off Omaha Beach. They were part of the first wave of American soldiers to hit the sands of Normandy. Later that day, two more soldiers from the same small town died of gunshot wounds. Twenty-one sons of Bedford killedno other town in America suffered a greater one-day loss. It is a story that one cannot easily forgetand one that the families of Bedford will never forget. It was, and still is, Bedfords longest day.The Bedford Boys is the intimate true story of these young men and their friends and families in Bedford. It portrays a neighborhood of soldiers before and during the warfrom the girlfriends they left behind to the buddies they made in basic training, from anxious barracks in England to the bloody beaches of Normandy. Based on extensive interviews with survivors...

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T HE
B EDFORD B OYS
T HE
B EDFORD B OYS

One American Towns Ultimate
D-Day Sacrifice

ALEX KERSHAW

Copyright 2003 by Alex Kershaw All rights reserved No part of this - photo 1

Copyright 2003 by Alex Kershaw

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the publisher. Printed in the United States of America.

Designed by Brent Wilcox
Set in 11-point Fairfield Light by The Perseus Books Group

Cataloging-in-Publication data for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
First Da Capo Press edition 2003
ISBN 0-306-81167-7
eBook ISBN: 9780786731411

Published by Da Capo Press
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
http://www.dacapopress.com

Da Capo Press books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the U.S.
by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more information, please
contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 11 Cambridge
Center, Cambridge, MA 02142, or call (800) 255-1514 or (617) 252-5298,
or e-mail .

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 907 06 05 04 03


For Bedford,
veterans of D-Day,
and those who died that others might be free.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book could not have been written without the help and cooperation of many extraordinary people in Bedford. On several visits to this enchanting town below the Peaks of Otter, I was treated with the utmost kindness. It was a great honor to spend so much time trying to commemorate such a wonderful group of men and the families and community that reared them. Bedford represents all that is great and gracious about America.

I would like to thank the following relatives, veterans, and various experts for providing me with information and photographs, and in some cases enduring several hours of interviews and many, many phone calls over the last three years: Eloise Rogers, Johnny Powers, Earl Boyd Wilson, Dorothy Goode, Hazel Clifton Pierce, Linda Gilley, Carol Tuck-willer of the National D-Day Foundation, John Barnes, Harold Baum-garten, Marcia Apperson, Mitch Yockelson of the National Archives, Elizabeth Teass, Major Jimmy Kilborne of the Staunton Armory, Russell Pickett, Bob Slaughter, Lucille Hoback Boggess, Ellen A. Wandrei and her wonderful staff at the Bedford County Museum, the astonishingly helpful Michael Edwards of the Eisenhower Center, Betty Wilkes Hooper, the outstandingly patient Roy and Helen Stevens, Ray Nance, Eleanor Yowell, Elaine Cockes, Allen Huddleston, the marvelously hospitable Pride and Rebecca Wingfield, Bertie Woodford, Billy Parker, Gamiel Draper, Bob Sales, Jimmy Green, Ivylyn Hardy, Mabel Phelps, Jack Mitchell, Earl and Elva Newcomb, Verona Lipford, Anna Mae Stewart, Billy Parker, Mary Daniel Heilig, staff of the Bedford Bulletin, Beulah Witt, Ellen Quarles, David Draper, Michael Zimmerman, Sibyle Kieth Coleman, Gary Bedingfield, Laura Burnette, Octavia White Sumpter, Kevan Elsby, Judy Monroe, George Gillam, Peter Viemeister, and Linda Gilley.

The staff of the following institutions provided invaluable help with my research: The New York Public Library, the Sawyer Library at Williams College, Loyola Marymount Library in California, the Imperial War Museum, Bedford County Museum, the National D-Day Museum, the McCullogh Free Library in Bennington, and the Eisenhower Center.

I have been exceptionally lucky to have had such an astute, skilled, and enthusiastic editor as Robert L. Pigeon of Da Capo Press. I cannot thank him and his team enough for their support for this project. My agent, Derek Johns, once again helped in every way he possibly could. I am enormously grateful to him for his long-standing patience, support, and generosity. My wife, Robin, and son, Felix, once again tolerated my absence and obsession and brought untold joy. I would also like to thank the Loerch family, and of course my own, for their long-standing support.

THE BEDFORD BOYS

Company A:

Abbott, Leslie C., Sergeant
Broughman, Cedric C., Technician
Carter, Wallace R., Private First Class
Clifton, John D., Private First Class
Coleman, Andrew J., Private First Class
Crouch, George E. Technician
Draper, Jr., Frank P., Sergeant
Edwards, Jr., Robert D., Sergeant
Fellers, Taylor N., Captain
Fizer, Charles W. Private First Class
Gillaspie, Nicholas N., Private First Class
Goode, Robert L., Sergeant
Hoback, Bedford T., Private
Hoback, Raymond S., Sergeant
Huddleston, Allen, Sergeant
Lancaster, James, Private First Class
Lee, Clifton G., Private
Marsico, Robert (Tony) E., Sergeant
Mitchell, Jack, Sergeant
Nance, Elisha R. (Ray), First Lieutenant
Newcomb, Earl R., Sergeant
Overstreet, Glenwood (Dickie) E., Private First Class
Parker, Earl L., Sergeant
Powers, Henry Clyde, Sergeant
Powers, Jack G., Private First Class
Reynolds, John F., Private First Class
Rosazza, Weldon A., Private First Class
Schenk, John B., Sergeant
Stevens, Ray O., Sergeant
Stevens, Roy O., Sergeant
Thurman, Anthony M., Sergeant
Watson, James W., Private First Class
White, Jr., Gordon H., Sergeant
Wilkes, Harold E., Sergeant
Wilkes, John L., Master Sergeant
Wingfield, Pride, Sergeant
Wright, Elmere P., Sergeant
Yopp, Grant C., Sergeant


Company C:

Dean, John W., Master Sergeant


Company F:

Parker, Joseph E. (Earls brother), Sergeant

Companies A, C, and F were part of the 116th Infantry Regiment commanded by Colonel Charles D.W. Canham. The 116th was part of the 29th Division commanded by Major General Charles H. Gerhardt. Brigadier General Norman D. Cota was Assistant Division Commander of the 29th.

D-Day H360 J UNE 6 1944 1230 AM The British troopship the Empire - photo 2
D-Day H360 J UNE 6 1944 1230 AM The British troopship the Empire - photo 3

D-Day, H360

J UNE 6, 1944, 12:30 A.M.: The British troopship, the EmpireJavelin, steamed steadily across the English Channel. Among her passengers were thirty-four young men from the small Virginia town of Bedford. They belonged to the 116th Infantrys Company A, a select two-hundred man unit. After twenty months of arduous training, Company A had been chosen from among the 15,000 GIs in the Army of the United States 29th Division to spearhead the most dangerous and critical American assault of the entire war.

Below decks, twenty-five-year-old Sergeant Frank Draper Jr. scribbled notes in his diary. The army had been the making of him. Draper, naturally ebullient, with finely chiseled features and a superb physique, had grown up on the wrong side of the tracks in Bedford, poor even by the woeful standards of the Depression. Since leaving home, he had become a first-rate soldier, and he was determined to bring honor to his unit as well as to his hardscrabble neighborhood back in Bedford, where hed scavenged for coal as a boy to keep his family warm. As ever, he wanted to be sure he was prepared for the next day, so he wrote himself a note: Sleep in your trousers, shirt and gas mask. Breakfast2.30 A.M. Departure 4 A.M. Hit water4.30 A.M.

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