When Freedom Took Everything
They Were Ordinary Men. What They Gave Was Not.
The Art of Becoming is about turning obstacles into opportunities. Drawing from philosophy, resilience, and real-life experiences, I share lessons on navigating adversity, cultivating wisdom, and living with purpose. Because in the end, life isn’t about avoiding hardship—it’s about becoming someone who thrives in it.
We won’t always have the answers, but we can search for them together.
I hope you’ll join me.
Today marks the 81st anniversary of D-Day.
Usually, this is where I draw lessons from the past so we can learn to become more resilient, to overcome adversity, and find truth in the sacrifices made by others.
After researching and reflecting on the losses by the Americans, Canadians, British, French, and a dozen other countries that day, I find that I cannot.
I don’t have the words.
There is a debt that must be honored—with the understanding that we can never repay it. Though we must try.
Let’s get to it.
They were called the Bedford Boys.
Long before America entered the war, thirty-eight young men from Bedford, Virginia, joined the Virginia National Guard, enlisting in Company A for reasons that ranged from patriotism to economic need.
Being in the Guard meant weekend drills and a little extra money during the Depression. Some were paid one dollar when they joined the Guard. In February 1941, months before Pearl Harbor, their unit was federalized as the country prepared for a war it hoped to avoid. By D-Day, these young men had trained together for over three years. Not conscripts. Not strangers. They were brothers.
Of the 16 million military personnel during World War II, ten million were drafted. What made the Bedford Boys special is that they volunteered.
The Bedford Boys trained together, shipped out together, and on the morning of June 6, 1944, they landed together in the first wave on Omaha Beach. What happened next lasted minutes but changed Bedford forever.
They jumped from a Higgins Boat into a wall of machine-gun fire and artillery. Within ten minutes, most of the Bedford Boys were killed. By the end of the day, nineteen of Bedford’s sons were dead—all died in that initial assault.
One month later, on July 11, 1944, Bedford’s twentieth son, Private First Class Charles Fizer, also from Company A, was killed during a push toward Saint-Lô, France.
The youngest of the Bedford Boys was 21 years old, and the oldest, Captain Taylor Fellers, died just four days shy of his 30th birthday. Staff Sgt. Raymond S. Hoback’s body was never recovered.
Twenty men. One town. Whether they were related or not, every family in Bedford felt and grieved the loss. And yet, the town endured.
It was the highest per capita loss of any American community tied to D-Day and the Normandy campaign.
What D-Day Meant to the Allies
June 6, 1944, should have been an ordinary day. But it wasn’t.
And it wasn’t for the Bedford Boys, nor for the over 156,000 Allied troops that crossed the English Channel to land on the beaches of Normandy.
D-Day, or Operation Overlord, was the largest amphibious invasion in history and marked the beginning of the Allied liberation of Western Europe from Nazi control. The purpose was to establish a foothold in France, forcing Germany to fight on multiple fronts and accelerating its defeat.
To say the Allies won that day dismissively ignores the massive cost in lives and how it changed America and the rest of the world. Time, movies, and sheer ignorance have numbed us to the losses. Our historical illiteracy marks us as cowards.
There were over 10,000 casualties, including more than 4,400 Allied deaths. Two thousand five hundred were American soldiers, and many of them were never identified. Approximately 1449 British and 359 Canadians died on D-Day. German losses were estimated to be between 4,000 and 9,000.
D-Day was a decisive victory and ultimately led to the fall of Nazi Germany a year later. But to win that day, sacrifices were made.
Whole generations were ripped from the fabric of destiny by mortar shells and shredded by machine-gun fire. Every inch of sand was paid for in blood and sinew and bone. The beaches of Normandy weren’t picky. They accepted full payment of any life, whether American, British, Canadian, Belgian, Australian, New Zealander, Rhodesian, or German.
As President Ronald Reagan said in his 1982 Memorial Day speech:
Freedom is not bought cheaply, it has a cost. It imposes a burden.
And nowhere was that price paid more fully than in Bedford, Virginia.
Small Town, USA Pays the Price
They sent their flesh and blood. Boys who grew up playing baseball together, who chased the same girls, who just wanted to make extra money during the Depression, and believed that war only happened in the movies.
But that’s not real life.
War is the price young men pay for the decisions made by old men. They die by the handfuls, dozens, and the hundreds. To be buried in a country not their own, with white crosses that stand over them in solemn memorial, each one lining up for miles.
Back home in the towns and cities where they grew up, their moms and dads, brothers and sisters, former teachers, girlfriends, childhood friends, and neighbors continue to carry, for the rest of their lives, a thousand unasked questions, a million unsaid I love you’s, and a million more unspoken goodbyes.
And Bedford had 3000 of those goodbyes.
On Monday, July 17, 1944, the local Western Union received its first telegram:
“The Secretary of War desires me to express his deepest regret…”
That day, Bedford fell to its knees. The country joined them.
The telegrams arrived slowly. The Hoback family lost both of their sons, Raymond and Bedford. There were no bodies to bury. No last words. Just uniforms folded in silence and empty chairs at dinner tables.
All the families had was their grief. And still, somehow, Bedford stood.
People prayed in their churches and showed up at each other’s homes—because that’s what neighbors and families do for each other. And for a while, Bedford was broken, but not forever. Sons and daughters, nieces and nephews, grew up. They had children of their own. Life went on in Bedford, but its boys were never forgotten.
The Bedford Boys’ sacrifice wasn’t the end of the story. It was the beginning of a deeper responsibility.
And it begins by understanding that:
No town paid that price more fully than Bedford.
If we as a country, or a world, owe the Bedford Boys, and every man who died on the beaches of Normandy, June 6, 1944, anything, it is this:
To live lives worthy of their sacrifice.
To raise children who understand the cost.
To remember their history.
To lead with courage.
To speak the truth.
To understand that freedom is more than a flag. More than the standing during the National Anthem. More than watching an Orange Man hug the Red, White, and Blue after giving a speech.
Freedom is treating everyone—regardless of race, gender, creed, background, or belief, with equal dignity.
It is the understanding that justice isn’t selective.
And that liberty doesn’t belong to the loudest voice or the highest bidder, or the billionaire.
The Bedford Boys didn’t die for a nation of spectators—or for one political party to hate the other.
They died believing in something better. They died believing we would be better.
Isn’t it time we proved them right?
Sources:
Stars and Stripes
The National D-Day Memorial Foundation
WBJ7
Virginia Museum Of History & Culture
The National World War II Museum
The U.S. Army Center of Military History
The American Presidency Project
Thanks for reading. For a moment or two, remember the thousands who gave their lives so we could enjoy ours.
Love to you and yours,
Michael