John Daniel Clifton was born June 18, 1923 in Pittsylvania, Virginia, son of James Green Clifton and Minnie Lee Adkins. His family lived in Bedford county, Virginia, where his father worked as a machinist at a woolen mill. John had two brothers and two sisters. He attended high school for three years.

On February 3, 1941 he entered the Army National Guard at Bedford county. He was attached to the 116th Regiment, Co. A, 29th Division. In January 1942 they participated in amphibious exercises. The regiment trained at Fort A.P. Hill from April to 6 July, when they began exercises in the Carolinas (the second Carolina Maneuvers). On 17 August, the regiment was sent to Camp Blanding in Florida in preparation for deployment. In September the regiment moved by train to Camp Kilmer, the holding point for American troops being moved to Europe. After arriving on 18 September, the regiment embarked for the United Kingdom aboard the Queen Mary, a passenger liner converted into a troopship, on 26 September, arriving on 5 October… In late May the 116th was transferred along with the division to Devon and Cornwall, relieving the British 55th Infantry Division there to free up Tidworth for the buildup of American forces in England, Operation Bolero… The 116th participated in intensive training in Dartmoor and Bodmin Moor. In July, it commenced amphibious assault training on landing boats loaned by the British at Slapton Sands. In September the 116th RCT began training at the U.S. Army Assault Training Center on Woolacombe Beach, the first unit of the 29th to go through the center.

Operation Overlord was the code name for the Battle of Normandy. On June 6, 1944, Operation Neptune, commonly known as D-Day, began. 32 Virginia Guard Soldiers from Bedford's Company A, 116th Infantry, 29th Division were part of the first wave of more than 160,000 Allied troops that landed along a 50-mile stretch of heavily-fortified French coastline to fight Nazi Germany and begin the march across Europe to defeat Hitler. Company A assaulted Omaha Beach on the west end as part of the First Division's Task Force O and by the end of the day, 19 of the company's Bedford Soldiers were dead and two more died later in the Normandy campaign as did yet another two assigned to other 116th Infantry companies.

Pfc John D. Clifton was killed in action on June 6, 1944.

Originally buried overseas, he was reinterred at Greenwood Cemetery, Bedford, Virginia in 1948

Thirty-four Virginia National Guard soldiers from the town of Bedford were part of D-Day. Nineteen of them were killed during the first day of the invasion, and four more died during the rest of the Normandy campaign. The town and the "Bedford Boys" had proportionately suffered the greatest losses of any American town during the campaign, thus inspiring the establishment of the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford.

References:

Virginia Department of Health; Richmond, Virginia; Virginia, Births, 1864-2016

1930; Census Place: Bedford, Bedford, Virginia; Page: 11B; Enumeration District: 0008

1940; Census Place: Bedford, Bedford, Virginia; Page: 1A; Enumeration District: 10-10B

NARA; Applications for Headstones for U.S. Military Veterans, 1925-1941

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/70732570/john-clifton/photo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/116th_Infantry_Regiment_(United_States)#World_War_II

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_D-Day_Memorial

This story is part of the Stories Behind the Stars project https://www.storiesbehindthestars.org/. This is a national effort of volunteers to write the stories of all 400,000+ of the US WWII fallen on Fold3.

John D Clifton