The Bedford Boys: One American Town's Ultimate D-day Sacrifice (21 page)

Glenwood “Dickie” Overstreet, who would be badly wounded on D-Day, one of the most sociable and popular Bedford boys.
Beulah Witt.

Dickie Overstreet, center, with family shortly before shipping out
. Beulah Witt.

Clyde Powers and Jack Powers on furlough in Bedford, summer 1941.
Eloise Rogers.

Bedford boys at camp A. P. Hill in Virginia, 1941. Earl Parker combs his hair at center of front row.
Pride Wingfield.

“He was all soldier.” Captain Taylor N. Fellers, the Bedford boys’ hometown commander.
Bertie Woodford.

“We shared everything.” Sergeants Roy and Ray Stevens, twin brothers.
Roy Stevens
and Virginia Historical Association.

“Exact opposites.” Brothers Raymond and Bedford Hoback. Both would be killed on Omaha Beach.
Lucille Hoback Boggess and Virginia Historical Association.

Leslie Abbott, the first of the Bedford boys to come home in a casket.
U.S.
Army.

Wallace “Snake Eyes” Carter, Company A’s best dice player.
U.S. Army.

John Clifton, Company A’s “Casanova” who had Cherokee Indian ancestors.
U.S. Army.

Charles Fizer survived D-Day only to die a few days later in the hedgerows of Normandy.
U.S. Army.

Nicholas Gillaspie, the mild-mannered Southern gentleman.
U.S. Army.

“He just liked the dirt.” Quiet and deeply religious farmboy Gordon Henry White.
U.S. Army.