Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, April 26, 1994 TAG: 9404260115
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: VIRGINIA EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BEDFORD LENGTH: Long
It was the latest in a series of assaults by strangers on the small Virginia city this year. The visitors have come carrying pens and notebooks, tape recorders and TV mini-cams.
In anticipation of June 6 - the 50th anniversary of the Allied invasion of Western Europe in World War II - Western Virginia communities have been attracting overwhelming numbers of journalists, authors and historical researchers from around the United States and abroad. Bedford, because of the great sacrifice made by its sons and fathers on what was known as D-Day, has received particular attention.
Nineteen men whose homes were in Bedford and surrounding Bedford County died in the 1944 assault on Omaha Beach, one of five code-named invasion beaches on the Norman coast of France. It was the scene of the bloodiest fighting on D-Day.
The Bedford men belonged to Company A of the 29th Division's 116th Infantry regiment. Before being called to federal service in 1941, the 116th Infantry had been a Virginia National Guard unit with roots going back to George Washington and Stonewall Jackson. Its various companies were drawn from cities and towns across the central and western part of Virginia, and as D-Day arrived the companies still included many men from the same hometowns and counties.
The men from Bedford's A company and other units from Chase City, South Boston and Farmville were in the first wave of small boats to land on the storm-battered French coast at 6:30 a.m. At the end of the day, 91 of Company A's 200 men were killed, including the19 from Bedford. Of the rest, all but about a dozen were wounded. But on Omaha and the four other invasion beaches, American, British and Canadian troops had established a foothold in Adolf Hitler's European fortress.
Last Wednesday, Phillipe Reltien, a correspondent from Radio France's Washington bureau, was in Bedford. The next day, a journalist, sound man and interpreter from Radio France's regional station at Caen, Normandy, arrived for a weekend stay. And on Friday, a crew from French television's Channel 3 made its way to town.
"This is a tiny village. It is difficult to imagine such a tragedy in such a little village," Pascal Vannier of the French TV crew said during his visit to Bedford. Vannier said a Channel 3 crew will broadcast live from Bedford during D-Day commemoration ceremonies in June.
Regine Godard, a journalist with Radio France in Normandy, explained that she and her crew had crossed an ocean to tell Bedford's story because the people of Normandy cannot forget World War II and the D-Day landing of Allied troops. "It was the biggest, big deal of the century," she said.
Godard was accompanied by sound engineer Yves Paquiet and Vincent Richard, a broadcasting student from Paris, who was acting as an interpreter. They explained their trip after completing interviews with Bedford residents at the city/county museum on Thursday.
Radio France has been busy this year recording those who remember 1944. "The aim of the radio station is to keep alive that memory," Godard said.
While Americans refer to D-Day as an "invasion," the people of Normandy use the word "debarquement." To them it was not an invasion at all but a landing by people who came and brought them a different way of life, Godard said. All the children of Normandy know what it was, she said.
Bob Slaughter, a D-Day veteran from Roanoke, has been acting as an unofficial coordinator for many of the journalists and researchers coming to Virginia in search of the D-Day story. Slaughter fought with Company D, one of the Roanoke companies in the 116th, and landed on Omaha Beach 40 minutes behind the unit from Bedford.
Last October, courtesy of French TV Channel 3, Slaughter traveled to France along with Felix Branham, a D-Day veteran from Charlottesville's Company K, to appear in a documentary to be aired before D-Day. His phone started ringing with calls from journalists just after his return. "I was really surprised, because the 40th anniversary came and went and we didn't hear that much," Slaughter said.
At one point this spring, Slaughter said he couldn't get his grass mowed because of the time he was spending with the media. "Ask my wife; she'll tell you we can't get anything done."
Among many television productions planned on D-Day are those by ABC's "20-20," NBC's "Today Show" and the Discovery Channel. Print journalists who have visited the area have represented such publications as People magazine, the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and Paris Match, a French pictorial magazine, Slaughter said.
Staff Photographer Victor W. Vaughan contributed information to this story.
by CNB