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

by Alex Kershaw
Hennepin County Library hardcover 238 pages
genre: Non-fiction WWII history

This was so very sad, as all war books are. The copyright is 2003, so I'm not quite sure how it got on our Litwits list . . . but it was well-written and worthwhile, albeit more than a decade old.

Already on page 50, as the young Americans were heading to Europe, they saw horrors. The ship they were on (Queen Mary) rammed an escort ship (Curacoa) accidentally and "only 101 men from the Curacoa's crew of 439 were saved." How awful! Even with the information they had and being able to SEE the other ship, they couldn't avoid cutting it in half and continuing on themselves? Ugh. "Seventeen-year-old private Bob Sales of Company B had gone on deck to get some air. He couldn't understand why the Mary did not stop to pick up survivors." "'You're crazy as hell, man,' a soldier told him. 'The Mary, sitting still in the water - a German submarine could blow [us] off the face of the earth.'" Later the author notes "With their own eyes they had now seen how expendable men were in war."

It also makes me sad that in the 1940s, race problems were so awful (and on into the 1960s and nowadays . . . ). After mentioning what the soldiers read in Stars and Stripes, including the zoot suit riots, he notes that "In Detroit that June, where 300,000 whites and blacks had migrated to work in war factories, thirty-five people were killed, 600 wounded, and thousands jailed in two days of rioting."

New factoid for me: "Run by an ultra-secret intelligence committee, 'The Twenty Committee' (so-named after the Roman numerals XX - double cross), Operation Fortitude was arguably the most successful of all preparations for Overlord." I kind of like the clever wordplay, although I dislike the war strategies and the killing.

As far as WHY this young group of soldiers was chosen to be in the first wave, I don't want to think too hard. "Their lack of combat experience actually increased their confidence, some historians have argued. It was to the Allies' advantage that so many men had not seen combat; young men who have seen the horror of war are far less likely to rush headlong towards it. Naivete can perhaps be a powerful weapon." Reading this as a pacifist and a mom, I'm so sad for their relative innocence and their short young lives. I vividly remember watching Saving Private Ryan and being completely tense during the first twenty minutes, thinking "I'm watching this on a SCREEN in my LIVING ROOM! How did those young men DO this?" I know, I know. It's not like they could climb back onto the landing vehicle and say, "guess not. This is just too awful."

There's a paragraph on page 119 that actually made me laugh (amid all the depressing fighting and dying). I don't want to include it here, but the line, "made the most of an opportunity that Englishmen have sought since 1776" capped it for me.

Page 178 - "Stevens returned to his foxhole where he sat and prayed. 'I had come back,' he recalled, 'just like Jesus had said.' There and then I made  a deal with God. 'If you let me get back home,' I asked him, 'I'll be your servant.'" Roy Stevens was one of only six guys from Bedford who landed on D-Day and survived. Twenty-two others were killed in the Normandy campaign (19 right away in the first wave).

Very well-researched (lots of interviews and other primary source material) and written. Just a really sad book.