The Bedford Boys: One American Town's Ultimate D-Day Sacrifice

Associated Press

A gripping account...provides a view of the home front and the war's aftermath of joys and sorrows.

Booklist

Drawing on interviews with survivors and relatives, newspaper clippings, letters, and diaries, Kershaw has chronicled one community's great sacrifice.

BookPage

With the publication of Alex Kershaw's The Bedford Boys: One American Town's Ultimate D-Day Sacrifice, their story is told in more detail then ever before.

New York Times Book Review

There are scores of accounts of D-Day, but Kershaw...gives a new perspective...The story of the Bedford boys is worth telling.

Roanoke Times

Give[s] us an opportunity to understand what our fathers did to preserve our way of life.
—6/06/03

The Weekly Standard

A worthy addition to the history of D-Day, and a memorial to the small Virginia town.
—6/30/03

Virginian-Pilot

An exhaustively researched, poignantly rendered account...an excellent, fact-packed chronicle...a literary memorial.
— July 6, 2003

Washington Times

Mr. Kershaw's book relentlessly reminds us that war is about humans.
—6/01/03

Publishers Weekly

This accessible and moving group biography portrays the men of Company A, 116th Infantry Regiment, 29th Infantry Division, who were part of the first wave at Omaha Beach in WWII. Initially, 103 of them left the small town of Bedford, Va.-now the site of the national D-Day memorial-when the local National Guard was called up in 1940; 34 were still with the company on D-Day. Of these, 19 died in a matter of minutes and three more perished in the Normandy campaign. Men lost ranged from the company commander, Captain Taylor N. Fellers, from a wealthy Bedford family, to Frank Draper Jr., a fine athlete and soldier from the wrong side of the tracks. Long-time National Guardsman John Wilkes died as the company's top sergeant, while Earl Parker left behind a daughter he never saw. Both Holback brothers and Ray Stevens died, while Ray's twin Roy Stevens was one of the handful of survivors. Kershaw (Jack London) includes combat sequences that give a vivid private's- eye view of the particular hell that was Omaha Beach, while one of the most moving portions of the book is the simultaneous arrival in Bedford of nine "We regret to inform you..." telegrams. A capsule history of Bedford before the war, its role as part of the home front during it and its current place as (controversial) memorial site are all covered, but the book's central focus is on the town where a good many survivors remain whose memories have not faded and whose emotional wounds have not healed. (May 26) Forecast: With a 75,000-copy first printing, along with author and radio tours, Da Capo is clearly looking for Memorial Day and D-Day (June 6) spikes in sales, but the book is good enough to have a life beyond that, especially with the 60th anniversary of D-Day approaching next year. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

KLIATT

Sixty years ago Allied soldiers hit the beaches of Normandy. The Bedford boys were among them: National Guard volunteers from a small, close-knit rural community in Virginia. Nineteen of them died almost immediately and three died later. This story of loss that inspired Saving Private Ryan is told in vivid detail. We follow the boys of Company A of the 116th Regiment from their joining the Guard to make money for their families during the Depression to their training and deployment to England. We are tossed about in landing craft in the English Channel and hit the beach under murderous machine gun fire. We see the men die as their loved ones anxiously await their return. Soon the telegrams begin to arrive. "We regret to inform you..." Kershaw's powerful retelling of D-Day gives us not only the story of ordinary men doing extraordinary things, but also of those left behind in small towns all across America. And that epic battle is still claiming victims. "Sixty years after he crawled across Omaha Beach, the last living officer from Company A on D-Day was still plagued by survivor's guilt and the occasional episode of post-traumatic stress disorder." Photos enrich the story, which is followed by copious notes, a bibliography, an index, a conversation with the author, and 13 questions for discussion. KLIATT Codes: SA—Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2003, Da Capo Press, 274p. illus. notes. bibliog. index., Ages 15 to adult.
—Janet Julian

Library Journal

During World War II, the American 29th division went by several names, including "The Blues and the Grays" and "England's Own." In the companies of the 116th regiment, the men went by other names as well-brother, cousin, neighbor, and friend. Many of these men came from a National Guard company centered around Bedford, VA, and had joined during the Depression for the money and uniforms; friends and family members often joined together. The 116th was chosen to be the first ashore on Bloody Omaha beach on D-day, and their unit was devastated. Journalist and biographer Kershaw (Blood and Champagne: The Life and Times of Robert Capa) follows these young men from the time they joined the National Guard until they met their tragic end. Unlike the authors of other war books, he also highlights the families and hometown these young men left behind. Indeed, the powerful and heart-wrenching final chapters follow the families from D-day until they were given the awful news months later that 21 of their own had died, a loss the town continues to grieve almost 60 years later. Strongly recommended for all public libraries.-Brian K. DeLuca, Avon Lake P.L., OH Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

By-the-numbers saga of a bruised and bullet-riddled combat unit in WWII. Embracing only some 3,000 inhabitants, the little Blue Ridge town of Bedford, Virginia, offered few jobs for young men in the last years of the Depression. One source of work was the local National Guard detachment, which, writes journalist Kershaw, "was more akin to a social club than a military unit" and paid only a dollar a day. Still, most of the Bedford boys signed up, and when America entered WWII, they were shipped off to fight as part of the unlucky 116th Infantry, which saw hard combat in Europe. The regiment got chewed up at the Normandy landing, losing 375 men—including 19 of the young men from Bedford, bringing untold suffering to the town, now the site of a national D-Day memorial, for years to come. Kershaw does a reasonably good job of detailing the lives and deaths of these unfortunates, and of gathering the recollections of survivors and kin. Still, the enterprise seems a second-tier offering in the face of the Ambrose/Brokaw industry—and one drenched in clumsy sentimentality at that ("it is not so much in Bedford that the spirits of its lost sons are most palpable, but rather a few hundred yards from the beach where they died, in the American cemetery overlooking Omaha"). Though he has his strong moments, Kershaw misses or underplays a couple of big questions about the experience of fighting a war in the company of neighbors—common enough in the Civil War, but not so common in WWII. And in all events, he knows only two moods: a sepia-toned prewar nostalgia in which the young Guardsmen reveled on beaches "where city girls wore revealing woolen bathing costumes and the Bedford boyswould sweet-talk them as they jitter-bugged the night away"—and a scarlet breathlessness evoking scenes of detached eyeballs and "a body with legs off, sometimes just a leg, mangled parts." For war buffs who can’t get enough of Saving Private Ryan. First printing of 75,000; author tour. Agent: Derek Johns