The Bedford Boys

It was a sacrifice no small town should have to make, but Bedford, Virginia, did. It lost 21 of its sons storming the beaches of Normandy on D-Day. Journalist Alex Kershaw follows each one's story, piecing them together from survivor memoirs and extensive interviews. Like Saving Private Ryan, it is a sad, gruesome tale that Kershaw tells, but ultimately both tragic and heroic. William Dufris's reading is harsh, factual, and forceful. It carries the deep pathos that must accompany seeing the boys we have watched at play being mown down on distant beaches. Though Dufris's reading rings with tribute to that town and those boys, Kershaw's more subtle message--that senseless slaughter in war, maybe war itself, is madness--resounds even more clearly. P.E.F. (c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine

May 19, 2003
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.Because the book below has been embargoed by the publisher, we are running this review only today.