WASHINGTON — A busload of Bedford residents was swallowed up in a crowd of military people and politicians who came out Tuesday evening to see a movie about the town that sent a group of D-Day heroes off to war.

“What a remarkable turnout,” said Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., who was expecting about 200 guests to show up when his staff reserved the theater to let Washington see “Bedford: The Town They Left Behind.”

Lucille Boggess, whose brothers Raymond and Bedford Hoback were among the Bedford soldiers killed in the invasion of France on June 6, 1944, said she enjoyed talking with military men in the crowd who had served in Iraq.

Boggess felt a connection with them, she said, “considering what happened to my family” on D-Day.

Almost 800 people filled one theater and spilled over into another inside the recently opened U.S. Capitol Visitor Center. Warner said he organized it to honor the heroism of all who serve in the military as well as the “Bedford Boys” who landed in the first wave of troops on Normandy’s Omaha Beach.

The screening coincides with the 65th anniversary of D-Day to be observed later this week in Bedford, and was partly prompted by the death this spring of the last of the Bedford Boys, Ray Nance, who still lived in Bedford.

Warner said the screening also serves to highlight the National D-Day Memorial, which faces a financial crunch that he and Rep. Tom Perriello, D-5th District, are hoping to rescue with legislation that would give the U.S. Interior Department a role in operating the memorial.

“There’s no guarantee of success” for the bill, Warner said, but several members of Congress were present and “if I have to make the case with them, this helps.”

Perriello said he started working on his bill to assist the memorial about two months ago, when he first learned of its financial difficulties. “We believe the memorial in Bedford is a national treasure and deserves to be preserved. In the annals of American heroism, the Bedford Boys are second to none,” Perriello said.

The crowd, more than half of whom were active-duty or former military people, gave Virginia’s former Sen. John Warner a spontaneous round of applause when he entered the theater unannounced. They followed that up with a standing ovation when he was formally recognized by Virginia’s current Sen. Warner.

Two veterans of the D-Day invasion were present. C.D. Proffitt of Charlottesville, who received several decorations later in the war, met Warner during a reception before the screening.

Also present was Bob Slaughter of Roanoke, who landed early on D-Day and was later instrumental in getting the memorial built.

“The D-Day Memorial is not going anywhere,” Slaughter said. “It is going to stay up there on that hill” above Virginia 122 “and they may as well keep it up” by adding it to the U.S. Park Service list of sites, he said. “We’ve already spent $20 million on it and it needs to be maintained.”