Immersive display returns to National D-Day Memorial for America 250
The shows on June 5-6 will not only include the original retelling of the efforts leading up to and including the Normandy invasion, but a new prelude connecting those events to the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence’s signing.
A lingering question emerged following the National D-Day Memorial Foundation’s debut of "When We Went In: The D-Day Experience in Light and Sound" two years ago.
“As soon as it was over, we had so many people come up and say, ‘When are you going to do this again?’” April Cheek-Messier, president and CEO of the foundation, said. “In the weeks after the show, people were constantly calling our office requesting it.”
Today, Cheek-Messier is pleased to have a clear answer for those inquiries.
The immersive audio-video experience, written and created in partnership with Virginia Tech’s Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology (ICAT), again will be projected on the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford on June 5-6. It will be open to the public each night at 7:30 p.m. as part of the memorial’s 25th anniversary celebration. Tickets are required.
The show not only will include the original retelling of the efforts leading up to and including the Normandy invasion through the combination of first-hand accounts, archival visuals, and immersive sound, but also will feature a new prelude connecting those events to the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence’s signing.
The addition brings to life the written words of four U.S. Army generals — George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant, John J. Pershing, and Dwight D. Eisenhower — through artificial intelligence-generated voices interwoven with a reading of the Declaration of Independence. Similar to the original production, the words will be accompanied by immersive sound and music as well as archival visuals carefully brought to life with animation and motion graphics and spanning the four historic conflicts in which the men served.
“It’s stylistically very similar to ‘When We Went In,’ but it’s also different enough to be its own thing,” said Tanner Upthegrove ’19 MFA, ICAT’s multimedia engineer on the project.
The National D-Day Memorial officially opened in 2001 as a tribute to the largest amphibious assault in history, which is generally recognized as a major turning point in World War II. Bedford was selected as its location because the town lost 20 residents who served, and died, as a result of the invasion, making it the U.S.’s highest known per capita D-Day loss.
The memorial and the university have maintained a strong relationship during the past 25 years, especially through the Virginia Tech Corps of Cadets. Cheek-Messier said the memorial foundation funds two cadets’ trip to Normandy each year through the Global Scholars Program, and the corps is among its highest non-corporate donors.
Cheek-Messier said more than a thousand people attended the debut of “When We Went In” during the 80th anniversary of D-Day in 2024. For that project, ICAT and the memorial foundation staff worked together for more than a year and leaned on the memorial's archive of first-hand accounts. The familiarity with the source material, however, did not take away from the awe of the final production.
“We’d seen little snippets here and there, but seeing it for the first time at the memorial, I don’t really even have the words to describe it,” Cheek-Messier said. “A lot of the stories used were from veterans that we obviously knew and had become close to over the years. So to hear their words come through and have the memorial, not only as the backdrop, but as the storyteller of those words was remarkable.”
The new prelude will take place across the same backdrop and will span a sizable portion of the U.S.’s history. Like dynamics between the prelude and previous content, the words of each of the four generals are both significant on their own, while also demonstrating a connectivity to the larger story on display.
“We have four unique American perspectives throughout history kind of speaking to what’s happening in the country at the time,” said David Franusich ’09, MFA ’19, ICAT's multimedia designer on the project. “In ‘When We Went In,’ there’s this great through line of the Peter Thomas poem that went between scenes and tied everything together. And for us, the natural thought was to use the Declaration of Independence in the same way in the prelude.”
Cheek-Messier said celebrating the semiquincentennial alongside the 25th anniversary of the memorial and honoring the 82nd anniversary of the D-Day invasion highlights an important link between the nation’s founding and its role in the second World War.
“To see where we came from and then fast forward 168 years and you’re on the beaches of Normandy with them fighting to liberate a continent from tyranny and preserve democracy for the future, that’s a powerful way to start the film,” she said. “And it’s a reminder that democracy didn’t end with the founding and it’s not a guarantee it will always be there, but every generation has to work to preserve it.”
For Upthegrove and Franusich, the display also provides an illustration of the connections ICAT facilitates across academic disciplines and aims to make throughout Virginia and beyond.
“At Virginia Tech, we’re able to do incredible works like this and we want to use that to build a community,” Upthegrove said. “We want to partner with folks like the D-Day Memorial Foundation to uplift our history and our region by providing creative consultation on how they can achieve their goals.”
“For us, it’s really an extension of that land-grant mission of Virginia Tech. We’re bringing expertise to communities to make these things happen that probably couldn’t otherwise,” Franusich said.
