Formed in 1754, Bedford County was named after the honorable John Russell, the fourth Duke of Bedford, who at the time was Great Britain’s secretary of state. When New London, the county seat, was claimed by neighboring Campbell County in 1782, Bedford County accepted an offer of 100 acres along what is now Brambletts Road from native sons Joseph Fuqua and William Downey. A courthouse, prison and stocks went up, and in October of that year, still giddy from their newfound freedom from England, the residents dubbed the new county seat Liberty. The name was changed to Bedford City in 1890, when the industrial age saw the arrival of a tobacco factory, stores, taverns and more people.
But war, not commerce, has had the greatest impact on Bedford. Beginning with the Civil War, when more than 400 Bedford men died in battle, Bedford has lost more than its share of native sons to military conflict. And it was the losses sustained on just one day—D-Day, June 6, 1944, the turning point in WWII’s European theater when Allied Forces stormed the German defenses on France’s northern shores—that infamously put Bedford in the spotlight. Like 11 other Virginia communities, Bedford provided a company of soldiers (Company A) to the 29th Infantry Division when the National Guard’s 116th Infantry Regiment was activated in February 1941. About 30 Bedford soldiers were still in that company on D-Day, with several others assigned to other D-Day companies. In the first 15 minutes after their landing crafts hit the Normandy beaches, 19 sons of Bedford lay dead. Two more died before the sun set that day. On the basis of city population, no community in America suffered a heavier D-Day loss.
For that reason, the U.S. Congress authorized the construction of the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford. “[We] lost so many. It’s hard not to wonder how it would have been a different place if those boys had come home,” says Lynn Scott, the tourism administrator for the town of Bedford and Bedford County, sitting in her office in the lavish $2.7 million, 10,700-square-foot, four-year-old Bedford welcome center overlooking the memorial. Situated on 88 acres, the D-Day Memorial and its massive 45-foot-tall granite “Overlord” arch, named for the invasion’s military code name, opened in June 2001. The national memorial crowns the top of the city’s highest hill and offers a dramatic representation of the D-Day landing, including a water feature that simulates bullets hitting the English Channel around bronze statues of soldiers wading toward an aggregate cement “beach.” “The memorial is a big thing for a relatively small community,” says Bedford County administrator Kathleen Guzi. “It has given us a greater sense of pride in our community. It had always been there, the knowledge of Bedford’s sacrifice for the country, but it was dormant. Being the home of recognition for all the lives lost … we’re not Washington, D.C., so it’s a big deal.”
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