Rodney Cress, Veteran’s advocate, Rowan County, N.C.
♦ A local group from Cary, NC wants to add a new memory to what local veterans recall about their service during World War II: a trip to the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, Va., for the 70th anniversary commemoration of the Battle of Normandy. It was D-plus-5, five days after the initial invasion of June 6, 1944, in what remains one of the largest amphibious military assaults in history. Just days before, more than 150,000 troops – delivered by more than 5,000 ships and 13,000 aircraft – had poured onto 50 miles of beaches in Normandy to try to wrest control of France from German forces in World War II.
The journey to Bedford – including the chartered bus trip, meals and a night in a hotel – would be to free to veterans. The group will arrange for medical personnel and other helpers but would like for each veteran to be accompanied by his or her own guardian, who would pay their own way. The group will need about $30,000 to take about 100 veterans and their guardians.
While all veterans can apply for the trip through the group’s website, www.operationomaha.org, if the project doesn’t raise enough money to take everybody who asks to go, reference will be given to those who served in the June 6, 1944, assault or came ashore at Normandy in the first 30 days afterward.
No one knows how many veterans of the campaign survive. Of the more than 16 million U.S. troops who served in World War II, fewer than 1.7 million remain, and they’re in their late 80s and 90s. The Department of Veterans Affairs estimates that about 29,000 World War II veterans are living in North Carolina.
Others from around the state are expected to make the trip to Bedford, where the D-Day memorial opened on June 6, 2001. Today, 50,000 to 75,000 people come to the town each year to visit the memorial, which includes a listing of the names of the 2,499 Americans known to have died in the attack before midnight on June 6, along with the names of 1,914 Allied troops who perished.
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