Photo: Abbott Reed Webber before being deployed overseas, February 1943. From the archives of the Bedford Historical Society
On June 6 the nation observes the 75th anniversary of D-Day, the invasion of Normandy beaches by Allied forces in 1944 that ultimately led to the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II. Among those sent into battle that day was Bedford’s Abbott Reed Webber. He was a medic with the 101st Airborne Division that parachuted into enemy territory during the night. He was later wounded during the Battle of the Bulge in Ardennes forest. His widow, Doris “Mickey” Webber, died earlier this year.i
Don Corey, President
Special thanks to Joe Damery for sharing this memory of Abbott Reed Webber after reading the above blog entry:
“During WWII, Mr. Webber, dressed in combat uniform & wearing his parachute pack, visited us in Grades 5 thru 9 at the Center school – then located in the brick building, now our town hall. Standing on the stage after a brief introduction, he explained how his parachute operated. He actually pulled the rip-cord which ejected a small parachute – his pilot chute, which was designed to pull and deploy his main parachute out of its container.
Not many weeks later he was on the way to Europe, where he did indeed parachute right into the war zone. We pre-teenagers were totally impressed by seeing, first-hand, just a portion of what our men and women in uniform were doing . . . Always through the years I quietly admired Mr. Webber whose actual residence was only a few hundred feet from that school building, where he simply resumed being a civilian-veteran, as so many among us continued to do.”
