The Bedford boys of Company A of the 29th Infantry Division’s 116th Infantry Regiment never had a chance.

There is an old truth known by military men that no military plan survives contact with the enemy. This was never more obvious than what happened at 6:30 a.m. on June 6, 1944, when the invasion at Omaha Beach began. Allied bombardments and a massive air campaign that went awry had failed to eliminate or effectively slow down the Nazi machine-gun and mortar crews.

In the first wave of the invasion, 19 men from the small town of Bedford Virginia were part of Company A of the 29th  Infantry Division had trained together, ate together, slept together, and now were landing together in the face of a hostile enemy that had been preparing for them for years.

The interlocking fields of machine gun fire were carefully laid out for just such an invasion. The bombing and ships cannons failed to prepare the beaches in a way that would help…