D-Day Tribute Marks Veterans Day Rite

Ground was broken Tuesday--Veterans Day--for the National D-Day Memorial, a tribute being built in this small town because it lost 21 men on the beaches of Normandy, the most D-Day deaths per capita of any American community.

Several hundred veterans were among the more than 1,000 people attending the ceremony.

“It means we’re finally getting the recognition for what we did,” said Ray Nance, a D-Day veteran from Bedford.

The memorial will honor the 6,603 Americans killed along the coast of France in the D-Day invasion of Nazi-held Europe, the largest air, land and sea invasion ever undertaken. The 10-acre monument and education center are scheduled to be finished by the 55th anniversary of D-Day in 1999.

Of 35 soldiers from Bedford, 19 died in the first 14 minutes of the Allied invasion on June 6, 1944, and two more died later that day. The town, at the base of the Blue Ridge Mountains, had a population of just 3,200 then; it has since grown to 6,500.

Bedford native Roy Stevens, 78, said he will never forget the slaughter of his fellow soldiers on Normandy’s Omaha Beach. One of them was his brother.

“What this is for today, I reckon, is to remember and help younger people know what happened and what freedom means to all of us,” said Stevens.

“Time has washed away the blood of our fallen heroes from the beaches of Omaha and the cliffs of Normandy,” Gov. George F. Allen said at the groundbreaking. “But time has not washed away, and must not dim, our memories of those horrific and heroic events.”

In a Veterans Day observance at Arlington National Cemetery, President Clinton placed a wreath of red, white and blue flowers at the Tomb of the Unknowns before the playing of “Taps.”

He said one good way for the nation to honor those who fought its wars is by enlarging NATO to help assure peace in Europe.

The president urged the Senate to approve an expansion of the Western alliance to include Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic.

In Europe’s celebration of Armistice Day, young French soldiers in vintage World War I motorcycles rode down the Champs-Elysees in Paris, and Britons paused for two minutes of silence Tuesday.

At the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, Emmylou Harris brought a crowd of veterans to their feet and to tears as she sang “50,000 Names” with songwriter Jamie O’Hara.

The ceremony marked the 15th anniversary of the dedication of the black granite wall, which is engraved with the names of 58,209 Americans killed in Vietnam.

Verses of the song described the wall, mementos left there and people searching for names: “Boy Scout badge and a merit pin, little American flags waving in the wind. There’s 50,000 names carved in the wall.”