D Day 65th Anniversary

U.S. President Barack Obama on Saturday marked the 65th anniversary of the D-Day landings on France's Normandy beaches, an important World War Two breakthrough in the battle against Nazi Germany. Residents in Normandy towns decked their streets in U.S. and French flags in preparation for Obama's visit. Posters welcoming Obama read: "Yes, we ca(e)n," a cross between Obama's election campaign slogan and the city, Caen which British and Canadian troops captured in 1944 after two months of bitter fighting.

Before taking part in the anniversary ceremony, Obama will hold talks in nearby Caen with French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Among the issues on the agenda will be Iran's nuclear programme which Sarkozy discussed with Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki when they met in Paris this week. Obama has been seeking to repair ties with France and other European states who were alienated by his predecessor George W. Bush's go-it-alone diplomacy, the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and his policies on climate change.

French officials said Mottaki brought a message from Tehran that the Iranians were putting the finishing touches to a counter-proposal to a package of incentives offered by France, Britain, Germany, the United States, Russia and China that seeks to encourage Iran to halt uranium enrichment. Obama's presence at the D-Day ceremony has almost overshadowed the event, to the point that Sarkozy's failure to invite Britain's Queen Elizabeth prompted accusations that he was trying to make space for himself next to Obama.

D-Day

Today is D-Day. How many will continue to remember this major milestone battle of World War II that played such a big part in the freedom we enjoy? How many will keep the observance alive even as the Greatest Generation dies off and the memories fade? It's "A Gathering of the Greatest Generation" - though this year only a small group of that era's aging heroes will commemorate the invasion of France at Normandy 65 years ago.

On Saturday afternoon, veterans will attend a National World War II Museum ceremony in New Orleans recognizing soldiers, sailors and airmen who made that invasion a turning point for Allied forces. However, organizers acknowledge few members of an already dwindling population are hardy enough to make the trip. "We won't have a veteran from each state, unfortunately," said William Detweiler, who is in charge of the event.

Like eleven 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 on 3 February 1941. Some thirty Bedford soldiers were still in that company on D-Day; several more from Bedford were in other D-Day companies, including one who, two years earlier, had been reassigned from the 116th Infantry to the First Infantry Division. Thus he had already landed in both Northern Africa and Sicily before coming ashore on D-Day at Omaha Beach with the Big Red One.