BEDFORD – As a kid, Jim Brothers wasn’t much of a jock.
So to impress girls he became an artist, the 67-year-old Kansas native joked Wednesday at the National D-Day Memorial.
Several sculptures he made portray U.S. soldiers invading Omaha Beach, which is depicted at the memorial in an open area with a pool that hisses to give sound effects of bullets.
Earlier this week he drove to Bedford from Kansas to deliver the most recent bronze addition to the fray, this one showing a medic assisting a wounded man on the shore. The piece was installed Wednesday, along with a portrait bust in the East Garden of Allied D-Day Ground Commander Bernard Montgomery.
Private collectors, corporations and institutions, including the Pentagon, own Brothers’ work. His research includes talking to historians as well as soldiers who were there.
Many D-Day veterans he spoke to paid tribute to medics who were there with them, he said. The facial expression, detail of dress and body position in each statue is intended to tell a personal account.
“I could give a story behind almost every piece,” Brothers said. “You try to put on their faces the terror they saw.”
The memorial, which opened in 2001, has called on Brothers to provide all but one of the statues on site. His other work includes a statue of Dwight D. Eisenhower, a soldier wading through the water clutching a rifle over his head and a lifeless soldier lying at the water’s edge.
The artist, who recalls the end of World War II, wants people to have an authentic feel of what the soldiers went through. It’s worthwhile to leave something behind that pays homage to their irreplaceable sacrifice, he said.
“You want to say thank you — and this is the best way I can.”
Shannon Brooks, associate for research and publications at the memorial, said the new medic statue was four years in waiting.
The precision in detail, such a wedding ring featured on a bronze infantryman, is what she said makes Brothers’ work so unique and inspiring.
“It captures the emotion of a moment in history, not just the action,” Brooks said.
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