overran machine gun nests hidden everywhere, punched through walls of barbed wire and overtook bunkers of concrete and steel."

The president quoted World War II journalist Ernie Pyle as saying, "It seemed to me a pure miracle that we ever took the beach at all. The advantages were all theirs, the disadvantages all ours. And yet, we got on."

The two-hour ceremony was highlighted by D-Day veterans reading other veterans' written accounts of the horror, sorrow, fear and heroism during the invasion. Hundreds of veterans traveled from across the country to attend the event.

French Ambassador to the United States Francois Bujon de l'Estang thanked all D-Day veterans for liberating France. Representatives from the United Kingdom and other Allied countries participated in the ceremony.

The price Bedford paid to be the memorialsite was in blood.

"Upon this beautiful town fell the heaviest share of American losses on D-Day -- 19 men from a community of 3,200, four more afterwards," President Bush told the crowd. "When people come here, it is important to see the town as the monument itself. Here were the images these soldiers carried with them and they thought of when they were afraid. This is the place the soldiers left behind, and here was the life they dreamed of returning to."

War historians say the tiny town's 23 deaths were the highest per-capita loss of any single community in the United States. The 19 Bedford fathers, sons, uncles and brothers who perished on D-Day died in the first 15 minutes of the invasion of Omaha Beach. Mortar and