One Small Town's Ultimate Sacrifice

By Troy M. Olson

Bedford sent its citizen-soldiers to the Second World War just like my hometown did and many towns like it did. But what sets Bedford apart from them all is the sheer magnitude of their community pain.

Last week I finished The Bedford Boys by Alex Kershaw while on my 5th (6th?) plane over the course of eight days. While we ran into just about every conceivable airport issue on our family vacation, I couldn't help but come to the conclusion that my oldest walked away with a core memory. It was here that he discovered his love for swimming pools.

Alex Kershaw's The Bedford Boys

For myself, when I wasn't trying to finish Masters of the Air, a WWII miniseries featuring the likes of Austin Butler (still not done yet!), I was finishing this beautiful book originally published in 2001. 

2001 was just a few short years after Saving Private Ryan and was the release year for Band of Brothers, essential viewing for any American patriot, veteran, or WWII enthusiast. And, as a member of all three of those groups, I have unpacked just about everything I can get my hands on. So, why am I doing a quasi-book review 25 years later? I think precisely because The Bedford Boys made me look at it in a new way. 

Bedford, VA is the site of the National D-Day Memorial, and is, in part, home to one of the true stories that inspired Saving Private Ryan. I now know why Spielberg chose to fictionalize his account of D-Day and its aftermath. You have to. You have to reach for "story truth" because the total truth is just too painful. Bedford had a population of just under 4,000 people in the 1940 census. I grew up in a town larger than that but not much larger. Everyone knows everyone, or knows someone who knows everyone. Especially if you stick around for a few decades, and most people do. Because these are great places to live and raise a family. Bedford sent its citizen-soldiers to the Second World War just like my hometown did and many towns like it did. But what sets Bedford apart from them all is the sheer magnitude of their community pain. 

In the morning hours of June 6, 1944, in a matter of minutes, Bedford lost nineteen of its sons on Omaha Beach. This was the highest proportional loss for D-Day in the nation. Much of the town would not put together the magnitude of the loss. It took weeks, months, for the information to come into full view for the town's people and the many, many families who were affected. Some of the families had more than one son fighting. In one gut-wrenching account, Kershaw relates the story of a young man who lost his twin brother shortly after refusing to shake his hand (because he did not want to be fatalistic), saying he'd shake his hand after their mission was complete. Fifty years later, when visiting Normandy in his third act of life, he would reach out and shake his brother's hand up on the road where he said they would. 

In all, nineteen of the thirty-four Virginia National Guard soldiers from Bedford - who were in Company A, 116th Infantry Regiment, 29th Infantry Division - were killed on D-Day, and four more died during the rest of the Normandy campaign, two of them from other 116th Infantry Regiment companies. 

The pain of this loss never has left Bedford, only the passage of time and living memory could for those who directly endured it. I think this story resonated so much for me because my hometown lost three (and the overall county area even more) in the Global War on Terror conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. And those losses were excruciating for the town. The pain sticks around because remembering and honoring the war dead means it doesn't actually leave you. It's the most difficult for family, close friends, and perhaps worst of all for the tremendous survivor's guilt that befalls the living veterans. As I was reading the story of this town and its lost sons, I connected so much of what I have observed myself in others these past few decades. This is especially relevant because WWII is "the good war." And my era and Vietnam were "the complicated ones." 

For Bedford, VA, even the good war meant mostly pain. I hope in the years to come to pay a visit to the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, VA. 

Troy M. Olson is an Army Veteran, lawyer by training, and co-author of 'The Emerging Populist Majority' available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Target. He is the Sergeant-at-Arms of the New York Young Republican Club and co-founder of its Veterans Caucus. He has appeared on CNN, CBS, and OAN. He lives in New York City with his wife and two children, and is the 3rd Vice Commander ("Americanism" pillar) of the first new American Legion Post in the city in years, Post 917. You can follow him on X/Twitter and Substack at @TroyMOlson

Ephemeral Panic, Ephemeral Community

Earlier today, Verizon went down. 

Tens of thousands of users across the country - myself included - were unable to make or receive phone calls. 

Panic ensued. 

Thinking this was an issue specific to my Android phone, I began to frantically scour the internet for answers. 

Google's AI - which is a hit-or-miss - suggested I restart my phone, remove and re-insert my SIM card, and make some tweaks in the settings menu. 

Nothing worked. 

Then I began to wonder: "Maybe there's an outage in the area..." 

That turned out to be the case. 

On PhoneArena, an online tech blog, self-proclaimed "smartphone fanatic" Alan Friedman reported that there were Verizon outages throughout the country: "If you're a Verizon customer and all of a sudden you see the SOS icon on your iPhone, or you can't make or take calls, it is because Verizon is suffering an outage."

From Friedman's article, I was directed to Downdetector, a site that "reports about service issues from around the world."

I quickly learned that I wasn't alone. Within a few hours, well over a hundred messages filled the site's comment section.

"Can't make mobile calls in Western Ma. Data works fine."

"Hitting Michigan too"

"Can't make or receive calls or texts im in Northern Neck of VA"

"Cant make or receive calls in Houston tx but texts work"

I, too, left a comment about Brooklyn's outage. 

For a moment, it kind of felt like we were all in this together. Like a little digital community was starting to build around this shared problem. There was something genuinely fascinating about being instantaneously connected to people around the country, all of whom were in the same metaphorical boat. 

That moment, however, was fleeting.

Just minutes after I left my comment, my connection was restored. 

I promptly called my girlfriend, friends, and parents, assuring them that service was back up and running. 

When I looked back at the Downdetector comment section, I saw that it had quickly dried up. Everyone's service came back, so there was no longer a need to leave a comment with your name and state. 

Kristin from Alabama and Steve from Western Massachusetts had moved on with their lives. 

So long, old friends. 

From this brief, and ultimately trivial, disruption, I extrapolated something that I wanted to share: Community is often ephemeral. That is, when a crisis occurs, our natural reflex is to band together. This is an instinct that is hardwired in us. 

Once, however, the crisis is no more, we also, unfortunately, have a reflex to retreat inward and abandon those with whom we suffered. 

The purpose of community is not temporary expediency; it is long-term trust and reciprocity. 

Now, obviously, there was never a chance to form any kind or enduring ties with these folks on the message board. That would be silly. 

That said, those who commented weren't just looking for answers; they wanted to know that they weren't alone. 

Though fleeting, that nation-wide digital connection was something. 

When more remarkable crises occur - and they always do - let us stay connected with those who helped us get through it. 

-Frank

Send More Postcards

 

By Patrick Trouba

Postcards are a forgotten but fun way to create connection when you’re traveling, even if they have their challenges.

I stared at the rack of postcards in a souvenir shop during my first day in Amsterdam, trying to figure out which ones best represented the magnificent Dutch city to me. Who are these for? I wondered. Who is buying these? I didn’t wonder that because I don’t like postcards or think they’re stupid; quite the opposite (the answer to those questions is: me). But I knew it might not be easy to figure out the logistics required to actually post the cards, to deploy them according to their design and purpose. Even back in America, it wasn’t always easy, which is a shame because postcards are a travel activity with a lot of potential for human connection.

My dedication to sending postcards began as a way to let my grandparents know I was thinking of them through the last years of their lives. When I had occasion to travel, usually a professional conference or a short trip with friends, I’d keep an eye out for a good postcard. Once I found one, I’d send two copies, one to my grandparents, and one to my parents. If Mom and Dad confirmed receipt, that was a good sign that the mailbox I picked wasn’t a dud and Grandma and Grandpa had received theirs as well.

After they passed at the end of last year, I didn’t see any reason to stop sending postcards. If anything, I could expand the operation. My recent trip to Europe, my first time on the continent, provided the perfect opportunity. The itinerary: four days each in Amsterdam and Paris, both solo, and then joining a group for a trip through southern France, most notably to the Catholic pilgrimage sites of Rocamadour and Lourdes. I sent a total of 11 postcards to four addresses back home. It reminded me why I like doing this, and the unfortunate barriers that likely keep a lot of postcards unsold on shop racks.

If you sit down to write a postcard, you might be quickly daunted by how little space there is to write about your trip. But take this as a feature, not a bug. Limitations are the fuel of creativity. 

The first and most obvious benefit of postcards is that your friends and family enjoy two things: hearing about your travels, and receiving handwritten letters from you in the mail. Postcards are an efficient way to do both. If you sit down to write a postcard, you might be quickly daunted by how little space there is to write about your trip. But take this as a feature, not a bug. Limitations are the fuel of creativity. How could I distill my time in Rocamadour for its postcard? Maybe by talking about a “rose” and a “thorn”: the beautiful old chapels that I loved, and the local, barnyard-tasting goat cheese that I hated. Your postcard can take the generic but welcome approach of mentioning a highlight experience, it could play to your recipient’s sense of humor or a shared inside joke, or anything in between.

Postcards also encourage creativity in the variety of places and things they feature. If you think about sending postcards, you might imagine travelling to a city, and sending back a postcard featuring that city. And that’s always welcome. But don’t limit yourself to that, because the postcards don’t. Instead of sending a cityscape scene for the Paris leg of my trip, I picked a favorite Monet painting that was featured in the Musée d’Orsay. Any major art museum will be selling postcards of art in their collection. In Cleveland, at a conference, I found the opportunity to buy postcards of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, where the conference hosted a social evening. Restaurants, cafés and bars, in my opinion, are a very underexplored avenue for postcards. A favorite café near my office, now sadly out of business, stocked postcards among its merch, so I mailed a few and kept one to remember it by. Grünauer, an Austrian-German restaurant in Kansas City’s Crossroads district, delivered the check on a beautifully illustrated postcard featuring itself. I promptly mailed it to my grandparents.

Postcards are also efficient as souvenirs. On this European trip, I had almost no luggage room to spare for three-dimensional gifts for myself, let alone friends and family. But postcards? Those save space, and you’re supposed to get rid of them (mail them out) before you come back.

One unexpected benefit of postcards: maybe you’re not a great travel photographer! I’ve been assured that the photos I took in Europe are good, but even while taking some of them, I knew that I wasn’t capturing the beauty of the places that my eyes were seeing in the moment. Where the photography of the postcards was good, they became a way of communicating the grandeur of a place to a degree that I couldn’t with my phone’s camera. Unfortunately, sending a postcard is typically not as easy as it should be. You need three things to send postcards: the card, appropriate postage, and a drop-off point. As I noted, the cards are the easiest. The second, postage, isn’t too difficult if you’re travelling and mailing domestically, especially because you can buy it ahead of time. In Europe, the logistics game was more difficult to play. In Amsterdam, the first souvenir vendor I asked had international postage. In France, most vendors didn’t have it, so I visited a post office while in Paris and lucked out in Lourdes with a vendor who asked if I needed stamps to go with those postcards. The final piece, a drop-off point, shows an eerily similar situation between America and Europe: postal services have degraded and are simply scarcer now. But Google can help you find mailboxes or post offices, and again I got lucky in Lourdes when my hotel could mail my postcards for me.

You’ll also experience returning home faster than your postcards do, not least because you’ll likely wait to mail them until you have experiences to write about. Internationally, this delay is magnified. My European postcards spent time in the system ranging from 11 days to over three weeks. But don’t wait to get home to mail them if you can avoid it! My grandfather once noticed when I sent a postcard with a postmark that didn’t match. That’s when I realized that postmarking cards from the location you’re visiting is part of the postcard magic. It’s sort of like a passport stamp (which I didn’t get in Europe. Thanks, EU Entry/Exit System). It says: you were really there!

Despite these issues, I hope you’ll try sending a postcard or two on your next trip. There’s a lot of potential in them to create connection, particularly with friends and family you don’t talk with all the time and who wouldn’t be the first to receive the pictures you send in texts and emails. Even if they’re close contacts, who wouldn’t appreciate the effort you made to brighten up their mailboxes? It’s another way we can show we’re thinking about each other.

*For bonus effort points, try reviving your grade school cursive. 

Patrick Trouba is a transportation planner working in the Kansas City metropolitan area.