Essay 24-B: D-Day: The American Soldiers And John Trippon

Essay Read by Constituting America Founder, Actress Janine Turner

D Day: June 6, 1944.  H Hour, Omaha Beach: 0630.  The Allies began to execute history’s most detailed and complex military invasion.  Infantry officers in the front of their landing craft yell two words they internalized during their military training–follow me!  A military axiom, “No plan survives first contact with the enemy,” began to unfold.

The 116th Regiment of the U.S. 29th Infantry Division was assigned to assault four of the five right-flank sectors of Omaha Beach.  Each sector was about a quarter mile wide.  Dog Green sector, on the 116th far-right flank, was assigned to A Company, the first wave to hit the beach.  A Company included 31 soldiers from Bedford Virginia, called the Bedford Boys.  Dog White sector, to the immediate left of Dog Green, was assigned to G Company of the 116th Regiment.  C Company of the 2nd Rangers, with only 68 soldiers, was assigned to Charlie sector, to the immediate right of Dog Green.

Low tide had just ended, and the tide was beginning to move in at 0630.  Many of the landing craft drifted with the tide to the left of their assigned sectors.  G Company landed about half a mile to the left of its assigned Dog White sector.  A Company and C Company of the Rangers landed exactly on their assigned sectors, leaving more than 270 soldiers in seven landing craft alone facing bullets from hundreds of German machine guns and rifles firing from high ground above the beach.  One of the six A Company landing craft, containing 5 Bedford Boys, was swamped and sunk.  Those Bedford Boys survived and rejoined their Regiment several days later.  When the ramps of the landing craft dropped, German gunners killed or wounded many soldiers before they even exited.  Within minutes of landing, only one-third of A Company’s soldiers were still able to fight.  Many of their officers were dead; 19 of the 31 soldiers from Bedford, VA also were dead.   

Bedford’s population in 1944 was 3,200.  Men from Bedford who joined the Virginia National Guard before World War II were assigned to Company A of the 116th Regiment of the Guard.  When President Roosevelt had activated the regiment in early 1941, the 116th Regiment was attached to the 29th Infantry Division, the division to which it had been attached in World War I. 

When the final plans for D Day were developed, two infantry divisions were assigned to land in the first wave on Omaha Beach, the 29th Division on the right flank and the 1st Division on the left flank.  Of the three Regiments in the 29th Division, the 116th Regiment was chosen to be first on the beach with A Company in the assault.

Bedford, Virginia was devastated by the loss of so many of its youth in just the first hour of battle.  Bedford suffered the highest per-capita losses of any American community during the D-Day assault.  The town of Bedford later dedicated the National D-Day Memorial on June 6, 2001.

Admiral Chester Nimitz, after the battle of Iwo Jima in the Pacific, said that “uncommon valor was a common virtue.”  This also described the Americans who fought on Omaha Beach, where many of the official small unit leaders were killed or severely wounded when the first wave hit the beach.  Dozens of individual soldiers with no formal leadership responsibilities in their units took the initiative to lead their fellow soldiers off the beach.  One of those was John Trippon, a tech sergeant with the 6th Engineer Special Brigade who landed at 0730 in the second wave.  He dropped all his gear and weapons to avoid drowning in water over his head and then threw his body on concertina barbed wire to form a human bridge so his comrades could run over him. He survived, and his heroic actions saved many other lives.

Private Carlton Barrett, Tech Sergeant John Pinder, and 1st Lieutenant Jimmie Monteith, Jr. were awarded the Medal of Honor for their bravery on Omaha Beach on D-Day.  The Distinguished Service Cross, the second highest award for bravery, was awarded to 153 soldiers for their actions on Omaha Beach.  Many other individual acts of bravery occurred on June 6, but not all were recognized with medals. 

Ron Meier is a West Point graduate and Vietnam War veteran. He is a student of American history, with a focus on our nation’s founding principles and culture, the Revolutionary War, and the challenges facing America’s Constitutional Republic in the 20th and 21st centuries.

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