Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, September 13, 1995 TAG: 9509130056
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RICHARD FOSTER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BEDFORD LENGTH: Medium
At 1300 hours Tuesday, Operation: D-Day Video went off with military precision.
When the whistle blew, more than a thousand children stormed the hill overlooking Bedford Elementary School. Their tennis shoes were pumping up and down in the dry, crunchy grass, sending grasshoppers and dust flying.
At the summit, they rendezvoused with a crowd of World War II veterans and bystanders waving American flags.
Their objective: making a promotional video to raise construction money for the proposed National D-Day Memorial to be built on the site. The video, which will include interviews with D-Day veterans, will be sent to potential donors.
Providing aerial support for Tuesday's operation, a small plane flew overhead with a video crew. On the ground, Cathy Benson, a committee member of the nonprofit National D-Day Memorial Foundation, directed the crowd with a bullhorn.
A graduate student at Hollins College and mother of three, Benson said the film marked her directorial debut, though she has had some experience behind the camera.
"I was an extra in 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off,''' she said. "I actually have an arm in that movie."
It sure wasn't as big a production, but it was daunting nonetheless to coordinate the crowd in singing "America the Beautiful" and "My Country 'Tis of Thee."
"I can hum real good, but I'm not known for my singing," joked Bedford Mayor Mike Shelton, who tried a line of "O Canada" as he held aloft a Canadian flag to symbolize that country's participation in D-Day.
Bob Slaughter, a Roanoke D-Day survivor and chairman of the memorial foundation, looked at the crowd and said: "It's another milestone. All these people here, they are a testimonial for Bedford as the site for the D-Day Memorial."
Bedford lost more soldiers in the June 6, 1944, assault on Hitler's Fortress Europe than any other community its size in the country.
Nineteen Bedford-area soldiers who served in Company A of the 29th Division's 116th Infantry regiment died storming the west side of Normandy's Omaha Beach on D-Day. Ninety-one of Company A's 200 members were killed in the assault.
Pride Wingfield was a member of Company A until 1943, when he was transferred stateside and then to the Air Corps.
"Company A was just like brothers to me," he said. "It was a blow to me when they all got killed. I trained with them every day for three or four years."
Viola Nance's first husband, Earl Parker, died on the first day of the invasion. "Earl Nance, number 20363625: that was his dog-tag number," she said.
Wingfield's wife, Rebecca, said, "If you wrote as many letters as we did, you'd remember."
"We fought the war together back here," Nance said, holding Rebecca Wingfield's arm. "It was a terrible time. Bedford was a very morbid place."
Bedford County Supervisor Lucille Boggess, who lost two brothers in the invasion, was also at the filming. "I think they would have been real proud of this," she said. "It's surprising how much it stays with you. It doesn't seem like it's been that long."
"I think [the memorial] is going to give us an opportunity to come out and have a little time for our thoughts."
When built, the granite-arch memorial will have a statue atop it called "The Final Tribute" - a helmet balanced on a rifle stuck in the ground, like the temporary markers soldiers in Normandy left on the graves of the fallen.
"I can just imagine it on a breezy day, being alone up here," Boggess said. "I think a lot of people will find some consolation here."
Memo: ***CORRECTION***