Vierville sand for the first stone of the Bedford memorial

After the visit of the Mayor of Bedford to Vierville in March, Deputy Mayor Philippe Ygouf participated in the commemorations of June 6 in this city of Virginia. The article recalls that in 1944 Bedford had lost 23 young men from the 116th Infantry Regiment, who landed in the early hours of D-Day on Vierville Beach. The city then had, at the time of the report, 6,300 inhabitants. Its mayor, Michaël Shelton, had invited Philippe Ygouf to preside over the ceremonies and had sent Vierville, in mid-May, a charter preparing a twinning.

Philippe Ygouf had been struck by the place of Vierville in local memory: at the museum, at the library, but also in the name of a street Omaha Beach. With the agreement of Congress, Bedford and its county planned a forty-hectare memorial, including a museum, conference rooms, cultural center, bodies of water, gardens and a monumental arch. Michaël Shelton had assured him that Vierville would occupy an important place there and had expressed the idea of a mutual welcome between the two communities, linked by the destroyed houses and the sacrifices of 1944.

On June 7, the first stone was symbolically laid with a mixture of Vierville sand and Bedford soil. The completion of the memorial was then expected within two years.

However, the twinning project remained to be realized on the French side. Philippe Ygouf regretted a less marked enthusiasm at the city council of Vierville and wished to convene it exceptionally after receiving the copies signed by the Americans. He planned to contact Saint-Laurent, Colleville and Trévières, then associate other municipalities crossed by the 29th Division, in particular the 116th Regiment. He saw the future memorial as an opportunity to strengthen ties between the two shores of the Atlantic.

Reconstructed or uncertain passages:
- The photographic hat evokes a charter signature in Bedford, but the body specifies that it was not yet signed by Vierville: the twinning is therefore not presented as already concluded.

Archive image: https://vierville.cordelle.eu/PhDoc10/1997JUIN20a-Memo.jpg