SUE LINDSEY | Associated Press Writer
ROANOKE, Va. (AP) — When World War II broke out, the “Bedford Boys” left home to serve. Many of them didn’t come home — so many that the community had among the greatest losses per capita on D-Day.
Now the last survivor has died.
Elisha Ray Nance died Sunday in Bedford, a spokesman at Tharp Funeral Home and Crematory said Monday. He was 94.
Nance was among 38 National Guardsmen from the close-knit community of Bedford who were in Company A of the 116th Infantry, a spokeswoman at the National D-Day Memorial Foundation said. On June 6, 1944, 19 were killed when they landed on Omaha Beach at the start of the D-Day invasion. Two more died later.
The great loss from a town of 3,200 and its surrounding area led Bedford’s selection as the site of the D-Day Memorial.
Nance went home when he left the Army in 1944 and became a postal carrier, said Shannon Brooks, a spokeswoman for the D-Day foundation who works in the archives.
Staying in Bedford took courage, Brooks said, because his customers “were the same people whose sons and brothers and husbands he led into action, many of whom did not come home.”
“I believe he felt he owed it to those people to stay, to keep their story alive for them,” she said.
The area is steeped in history.
“A lot of families in this area have been here since the Revolutionary War,” Brooks said. “Everyone’s roots are tied very closely here with their neighbors’.”
Serving in the war meant more than a military engagement to the “Bedford Boys,” she said.
“This is personal. This is family,” Brooks said. “When their comrades fall, it’s not just some guy who was added to the unit three weeks ago.”
To honor his fallen brethren, Nance reorganized Company A of the Virginia National Guard in Bedford and was its first commander after World War II.
Nance is survived by his wife, Alpha; two daughters; a son; and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Tim Gray Media is proud to announce that its recent film, Navy Heroes of Normandy, has been selected to be screened in Normandy, France on June 4,5 and 6. The documentary (w/ French subtitles) will be shown in conjunction with ceremonies surrounding the 65th anniversary of the D-Day landings on the coast of France on June 6, 1944.
Navy Heroes of Normandy will be show over the course of three days at both the Utah Beach Museum in Sainte-Marie-du Mont, and during 65th anniversary celebrations in the town of Sainte-Mere-Eglise. Sainte-Mere-Eglise was the first town to be liberated on D-Day. It will mark the European debut of the film, which chronicles the building and dedication of the first monument to the United States Navy in Normandy.
TGM filmed on-location in Normandy in September, 2008, as the US Navy memorial was officially dedicated at Utah Beach.
“To be invited back to show the film during the 65th anniversary is a big honor,” said TGM’s President, Tim Gray. “This is our second film produced in Normandy in the past three years, so we have come to know the importance of the day for both France and the United States,” Gray said.
In 2006, TGM filmed the Emmy Award winning documentary, D-Day: The Price of Freedom.
“Allied D-Day veterans, U.S. President Barack Obama, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown are scheduled to be in Normandy for the 65th, so it will be an honor to be there during this exciting time and show the film,” Gray said.
To learn more about Navy Heroes of Normandy, visit Tim Gray Media’s web site at: www.timgraymedia.com
Tim Gray Media completes HD documentary film chronicling the monument’s building and dedication in France.
By Matt Millham, Stars and Stripes
European edition, Sunday, September 28, 2008
SAINT-MARIE-DU-MONT, France. It’s been more than 64 years since Irving Shapiro was last in Normandy, and he had at least a couple of good reasons for not wanting to go back.
Each of them earned him a Purple Heart on D-Day, June 6, 1944, when, as a sailor aboard LST 492, he made two trips to and from Omaha Beach. Bloody Omaha, as it’s sometimes called to drop off men and equipment and to pick up the dead and wounded.
Now in a wheelchair, something drew him back to Normandy and to the memories he said he’s tried hard not to think about.
On Saturday, the first official monument to the members of the U.S. Navy who took part in the Normandy invasion was dedicated, unveiled before a crowd of at least 1,000 spectators, including a handful of U.S. and French veterans and the widows of two men who had participated in the invasion.
How Normandy went so long without a monument to the Navy is a bit of a mystery.
Five years ago, a local tour company pointed out the fact to the leadership of the Naval Order of the United States, the service’s oldest fraternal organization. There are hundreds of monuments and plaques throughout Normandy, they told the organization.
The other U.S. services, the British, Danish, Polish, free French and other Allied forces all had monuments commemorating their involvement, said Gregory Streeter, a retired Navy captain who spearheaded the effort to erect a Navy memorial at Normandy.
“Operation Neptune was the largest amphibious operation in the history of the world. We could not believe that our Navy was not recognized for its contribution to that historic event,” Streeter said. Operation Neptune was the assault phase of Operation Overlord, the name given to the liberation plan that included the Normandy landing.
Through private donations, the organization raised roughly $500,000 to ensure the Navy would leave more than its memories on Normandy.
Eight ships were sunk here, and 1,068 sailors and Coast Guardsmen died. Roughly one-fifth of all U.S. casualties on the first day of the invasion were Navy, Streeter said.
“Victory or defeat at Normandy would determine the future, not just for France or Europe, but for all humanity, for freedom, for liberty,” said Gordon England, the U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense and former Secretary of the Navy.
The Normandy invasion would not have been possible without the Allied naval forces, which remains the largest naval armada ever assembled, said England, who was present at the unveiling.
The weather was poor, the seas rough, the water was littered with bodies of dead troops, some shot, others drowned by their gear, said England. “Yet somehow, in the midst of this chaos and carnage, each of them bravely did his duty. They were all heroes.”
Blog Article Courtesy: Kevin Coll
A series that I have been trying to keep my ear to the ground on is Steven Spielberg and Tom Hank’s spin-off of Band of Brothers called The Pacific. This HBO mini-series promises to be just as good as the Band of Brothers series but take place in a different setting. The title probably gives it a way but this series will show the war going on in the Pacific between the U.S. and the Japanese.
I haven’t heard much on the show except that they started filming back in 2007 and finished in May of 2008. I also had heard that it was supposed to come out this year but apparently it is being planned to come out next year, according to THR’s Live Feed.
When you mention their previous HBO war miniseries, the magnificent Band of Brothers, and then mention The Pacific to those who work at HBO, you get this pensive and hesitant expression. It’s not that they don’t think The Pacific is as good (at least one HBO person described the rough cuts as amazing), it’s just the Pacific Theatre was a very different front, with brutal atrocities being committed on both sides (see James Bradley’s excellent and disturbing book “Flyboys,” which makes the author’s better-known “Flags of Our Fathers” seem like a sixth grader’s essay on WWII).
Brothers also benefited from a wider range of dramatic settings. In other words, HBO senses The Pacific may be a tougher sell than the original regardless of its quality. On the upside, one episode is supposedly one extensive battle from start to finish, a small-screen attempt at taking on the opening of Saving Private Ryan.
I can definitely see how some are apprehensive over some things about the series being a tougher sell but in my opinion, Band of Brothers was so well done and successful, even the re-syndication of the series on the History Channel does well. I got the Blu-ray version of the series for Christmas this past year and it simply one of the best series ever on TV.
I think that alone makes The Pacific an easy sell because all the Band of Brothers fans were certainly watch the show to see a new series of stories. Also FYI the kid that played Timmy in Jurassic Park, Joe Mazzello is one the main characters, I think it is nice he is getting work.
More about The Pacific [2007 HBO Press Release]
The miniseries tracks the intertwined odysseys of three U.S. Marines - Robert Leckie (played by James Badge Dale), Eugene Sledge (Joe Mazzello) and John Basilone (Jon Seda) - across the vast canvas of the Pacific. The extraordinary experiences of these men and their fellow Marines take them from the first clash with the Japanese in the haunted jungles of Guadalcanal, through the impenetrable rain forests of Cape Gloucester, across the blasted coral strongholds of Peleliu, up the black sand terraces of Iwo Jima, through the killing fields of Okinawa, to the triumphant, yet uneasy, return home after V-J Day.
The Pacific is based on the books “With the Old Breed,” by Eugene Sledge, which was hailed by historian Paul Fussell as “one of the finest memoirs to emerge from any war,” and “Helmet for My Pillow,” by Robert Leckie (recipient of the Marine Corps Combat Correspondents Annual Award), as well as original interviews conducted by the filmmakers. Continuing the World War II oral history work begun by his father Stephen E. Ambrose (author of the book Band of Brothers), Hugh Ambrose serves as a consultant on the miniseries, as does Captain Dale Dye (Saving Private Ryan, Band of Brothers and Platoon).
“In addition to James Badge Dale (”The Departed”), Joe Mazzello (”Without a Trace”) and Jon Seda (”Kevin Hill”), actors featured in THE PACIFIC include (in alphabetical order) Akos Armont, Jon Bernthal (”The Office”), Joshua Biton (”National Treasure”), Adam Booth (”Doctors”), Simon Bossell (”Hotel de Love”), Laurence Breuls (”Ghost Rider”), Tom Budge (”Last Train to Freo”), Linda Cropper (”McLeod’s Daughters”), Brendan Fletcher (”Tideland”), Eamon Farren (”The Outsider”), Leon Ford (HBO’s “Tsunami: The Aftermath”), Daniel Frederiksen (”Stingers”), Scott Gibson (”Lucky Number Slevin”), Joshua Helman, Ashton Holmes (”A History of Violence”), Andrew Lees, Rami Malek (”The War at Home”), Martin McCann (”Closing the Ring”), Ian Meadows (”Home and Away”), Toby Moore (”Joanne Lees: Murder in the Outback”), Rohan Nichol (”All Saints”), Henry Nixon (”Happy Feet”), Keith Nobbs (”The Black Donnellys”), Annie Parisse (”Law & Order”), Sam Parsonson (”Love My Way”), Jacob Pitts (”The Novice”), Rupert Reid (”The Matrix Reloaded”), Mitch Ryan, William Sadler (”The Shawshank Redemption”), Gary Sweet (”Down in Splendor”), Anna Torv (”Young Lions”), Sandy Winton (”Two Twisted”), Dylan Young and Ashley Zukerman.”
Cows?
Not just any cows, but Norman Cows. How did these fine looking brown and white bovines help the Allied war effort on D-Day and the days after in Normandy?
First off, cows are naturally curious and attracted by movement. If they see movement, they think someone is coming to milk them and they keep focused on that person, watching them and waiting. Allied soldiers fighting in the hedgerows of Normandy learned to watch the cows and see if something was attracting their attention. Usually, it was the movement of troops-either ours of theirs. Most of the time-Germans.
Also, Allied soldiers learned that if Norman cattle were out grazing in a field then that field probably was not mined.
Too bad the Norman cows couldn’t fire a gun, they would have been even more valuable to the Allies in the Battle of Normandy in 1944.
