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.

Monday, March 23, 2009

The writer checks out a Norden bombsight vault at the McCook Army Airbase.

One of the most closely guarded secrets of World War II was the Norden bombsight. This was the invention of a Dutch-born American, Carl Norden, who had come to the United States in 1904, after completing his University studies in Switzerland. In the United States, Norden went to work for the Sperry Corp., which was developing gyroscopes for improving ship stabilization for the U.S. Navy. Carl Norden and Elmer Sperry really never got along with each other very well. Sometime after World War I, Norden left the Sperry organization to start his own company, with the idea of making bombsights for the U.S. Navy. But with the advent of World War II Norden’s bombsights were adopted by the United States Army Air Corps, and later the USAF. It was here, with the growing importance of the big bombers in the war that the Norden bombsight gained its exalted reputation, not just for the United States, but all countries of the world that were engaged in World War II, both Allies and Axis forces.

The Norden bombsight was just one step, but a giant step, in the evolution of bombsights, dating back to World War I, when pilots used a simple crosshairs telescope to help bring their bombs close to their designated target.

The World War II Norden bombsight consisted of two main parts, a stabilizer and a sight-head. The stabilizer was a platform that was kept level by a series of gyroscopes, and was attached to the plane’s autopilot, so that during the last stages of a bombing run the stabilizer actually flew the plane, to keep it on target.

The sight-head consisted of three primary parts. 1. A primitive analog computer calculated the impact point of the bombs, relative to the flight pattern of the plane. 2. A small telescope lined up the target initially. 3. A series of electric motors and gyroscopes automatically moved the bombsight so that the target remained stationary in the bombsight as the plane moved closer to its target. Proponents of the Norden bombsight claimed that it was foolproof. Using that bombsight, (they said), a bombardier “could drop a bomb into a pickle barrel from 20,000 feet.”

By the end of World War II 45,000 USAAF and USAF bombardiers had been checked out on the Norden bombsight, and all of them had signed papers promising to protect the bombsight with their lives, and to destroy it if they were forced to abandon their plane.

The ritual of using a Norden bombsight at air bases was rigid, (including its use at the McCook Army Air base). The bombsight was kept in a fortified storage building. When it was to be used, it would be brought out of the storage building by a contingent of armed guards. It was kept in a zippered bag until it was put in its place aboard a bomber (B-25, B-17, or B-29), by the plane’s bombardier. Returning from a mission, the bombsight was again placed in its zippered bag, removed from the plane under the watch of an armed guard, and deposited back into its storage building, which was also under a constant guard.

Despite the claims of the bombsight’s champions, the Norden bombsight was less than foolproof. Tests on the bombsight were made in level flying aircraft, flying at constant airspeeds. In combat, bombers flying bombing runs in enemy territory under these conditions were very likely to be shot down. Instead, U.S. pilots preferred to approach their targets in a gliding path, which made the planes harder to hit with anti-aircraft fire, but meant a great deal of manual input by the bombardiers, and a much greater risk of human error — thus a great variance in the dependability of the bombsight in pinpointing the bomb’s target.

Never the less, stealing the secrets of the Norden bombsight was a top priority of German spies during the war, even though it has since been learned that the Germans already knew the basic secrets of the bomb sight, but had decided that it did not fit in with their preferred method of bombing — dive bombing attacks as opposed to high altitude precision bombing, which the Americans preferred.

Capturing the secrets of the Norden bombsight was the primary goal of the largest German spy ring to be successfully captured and prosecuted by the Americans during World War II.

Nineteen-year old Herman Lang was a German engineer who immigrated to the United States in 1927 (and became a U.S. citizen in 1939). He took a job with Carl Norden and was soon assigned work making gyroscopes for the Norden bombsight. He apparently did good work, and learned the intricacies of the bombsight very well. On a trip to Germany in 1938 Lang had a meeting with Herman Goering, Hitler’s right hand man, and negotiated a deal (for $3,000) to reproduce from memory his recollections of the bombsight. During World War II German bombsights used many of the same principles of the American Norden device.

Upon his return to the United States and the Norden Corp., Lang continued to feed sensitive military information to the Germans through his involvement with the Duquesne Spy Ring, a key German spy organization, under the leadership of Fritz Joubert Duquesne, a U.S. citizen from South Africa, whose hatred of the British had led him to spy for the Germans in both World War I and World War II.

FBI agents were aware of the Duquesne organization in the U.S. for some time. For nearly two years, from 1939-1941, the FBI ran a covert radio station for the organization, intercepting information from Germany and controlling messages sent from the German spies in the U.S.

In late 1941, through the use of a “double agent,” Wm. Seybold, the FBI was able to capture, jail, and convict 32 German agents of the Duquesne Spy Ring. (Herman Lang was in this group and received a sentence of 18 years, and then was deported to Germany). FBI head, J. Edgar Hoover, called this the greatest roundup of enemy agents in the history of the U.S.

It was, indeed, an important coup. After the war a former German spy stated that the capture of the Duquesne group had effectively destroyed the German spy network in the United States. (The story of the Duquesne Spy Ring was the theme of the 1945 Academy Award film “House on 92nd Street”.)

Toward the end of World War II the weaknesses of the Norden bombsight were overcome somewhat when the USAF adopted the principle of “saturation bombing” of a target and pinpoint accuracy was of less importance for our bombers. Never the less, throughout the war the United States put great effort in protecting the secrets of the Norden bombsight, making the bombsight the greatest “non-secret” of the war. Some have described the extreme efforts of the U.S. in preserving the secrets of the Norden bombsight during World War II as a gigantic smokescreen, designed to divert attention away from the “Manhattan Project,” the making of and finally using the atomic bomb, which certainly did end World War II. Atomic Bomb secrets, though the subject of many rumors, were largely preserved by the U.S. to the end of World War II.

It is probably fitting that Tom Ferebee, the bombardier aboard the Enola Gay, used a Norden bombsight to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, thus combining the two great secrets of the war, the Norden Bombsight and the Atomic Bomb, to end World War II.

Source: Various Internet sources, Dale Cotton of the “Friends of the McCook Airbase.”

By Daily Mail (UK)

Colonel David Wood served in the Pegasus Bridge operation, which cleared the way for the D-Day landings

The last surviving officer to serve in World War II’s daring Pegasus Bridge operation which paved the way for the D-Day landings has died aged 85.

Colonel David Wood was just 21 when he led a platoon of airborne troopers in helping to secure two key bridges in Normandy, just hours before the Allied beach assault.

He was among dozens of troops who drifted silently behind enemy lines in six Horsa gliders in the early hours of June 6 1944 and took just ten minutes to take the bridges.

The heroic mission prevented the Germans from sending in reinforcements and enabled Allied forces to continue their advance after taking the beaches.

It has been hailed as ‘the single most important ten minutes of the war’ and featured prominently in the 1962 Hollywood movie ‘The Longest Day’.

Colonel Wood was awarded the Legion d’Honneur for his heroic actions - the highest order of the French government. He went on to serve 36 years with the army before his retirement in 1978.

Colonel Wood, who lived with his wife of 25 years Sarah in Cullompton, Devon, died in hospital on March 12 after a long battle with prostate cancer.

Yesterday, Captain Peter Hodge, honorary secretary of the Normandy Veterans’ Association (NVA), led the tributes.

‘He was an absolutely remarkable person,’ he said. ‘He was a figurehead for the Normandy Veteran’s Association and he will be sorely missed.

Colonel David Wood

Colonel Wood was just 21 when he led a platoon in the risky mission

‘He was one of the nicest men anyone was ever likely to meet and, among veterans, he was household name.’

Colonel Wood was commissioned into the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry, which later became part of the 6th British Airborne Division.

He was commander of 20 men in Platoon 24 of the Pegasus Bridge mission - codename Operation Tonga - which was led by Major John Howard.

The objective was to seize two bridges - Benouville bridge, known as Pegasus bridge, over the Caen canal and Ranville bridge, now known as Horsa bridge, over the River Orne.

German forces had laced the bridges with explosives so they could blow them up in the event of an Allied advance.

Colonel Wood’s men were in the second glider to land at Pegasus Bridge at 00.17 hours.

Their objective was to clear trenches, machine-gun nests and the anti-tank gun pit along the east bank of Pegasus bridge.

He was shot in the leg during the assault and was evacuated to a divisional aid post in Ranville and eventually back to England.

Both bridges were secured by 00.26 hours.

In a previous interview Colonel Wood said they had been blessed with two key strokes of good luck - the German major commanding the bridge was away from his post, reportedly enjoying a romantic liaison with a French woman, and German commander Field Marshall Erwin Rommel of the North Afrika Corps was visiting his wife on her birthday in Germany.
Enlarge pegasus bridge

The bridge can be seen in the background of this 1946 picture. On the right is Capt David Wood with Major John Howard DSO, who led the attack, and Georges Gondree, the owner of Cafe Gondree - now the Pegasus Bridge Cafe
pegasus bridge

Allied troops move across the Pegasus Bridge. Its capture was key to the success of the D-Day landings

‘By the time the major returned we had captured the bridge,’ said Colonel Wood.

‘The surprise was complete and our losses were smaller than predicted. Two of our men were killed and only 14 wounded, including myself.

‘I was shot in the leg and I am constantly reminded of my encounter with an enemy gun. My left leg, where I was wounded, is one and a half inches shorter than the other mainly due to the fractures I suffered.’

Colonel Wood volunteered for the Army at 18 and became an officer cadet. He spent two years training in gliders for the assault on Pegasus Bridge.

Exeter was the training ground for his mission because the bridges over the Exe and the Exeter Canal, including the swing bridge at Countess Wear, were identical to those across the River Orne and canal in France.

After the war Colonel Wood went on to serve all over the world with the Green Jackets and then the Royal Green Jackets, including Cyprus, Egypt and the second Suez crisis.
Enlarge pegasus bridge

In this aerial image of the Pegasus Bridge, taken shortly after its capture, the gliders used in this daring mission can be seen to the left of the river

His other postings were Northern Ireland, Germany, Malaya and Aden, where he was assistant military secretary.

He also spent time at Exeter’s Higher Barracks followed by a time as deputy commander of the Rhine area in Germany before retiring in 1978.

Colonel Wood, who was childless, was presented with seven campaign medals during his career and was made an MBE for his services to the military.

MSNBC.com

Levittown - It’s been 64 years since Leon Edward Frenier crawled through enemy fire.

On March 18, 1945, Army Pfc. Frenier struggled 200 yards as gunfire erupted around him in Saarlautern, Germany, and destroyed a German machine gun nest, allowing his platoon in the 297th Regiment to advance.

Frenier and a fellow soldier then had to throw enemy grenades back out of their foxhole.

“He ended this historic day covered in blood, his rifle blown out of his hand and with shrapnel in his arms and legs,” said Congressman Patrick Murphy on Saturday during a tribute to Frenier. The World War II hero and Langhorne resident received a Silver Star and a Bronze Star for valor during a ceremony at Yardley’s Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 6393

He was awarded another Bronze Star in 2006. The Silver Star was for the March 1945 effort. His second Bronze Star was for his bravery throughout his tour of duty.

“You set the standard for so many others to follow when it comes to devotion, dedication and service,” Murphy, an Iraq War veteran, told Frenier, and pinned the new Bronze Star Medal on him.

Bucks County state Reps. Steve Santarsiero and Frank Farry also thanked Frenier for his efforts.

While he remained quiet about his battle experiences, the 83-year-old’s face broke into a smile as his family and friends surrounded him. The room was packed with many veterans and supporters. Together they enjoyed a festive lunch that the Ladies Auxiliary provided on tables draped in St. Patrick’s Day green.

During an emotional moment, Frenier’s son David Frenier, a Vietnam War veteran and a Silver Star Medal winner himself, pinned the Silver Star Medal on his father’s dark blue jacket. Both of them exchanged quiet words during the ceremony.

“I’m very proud of my dad. He should have had it years ago, and I was delighted to pin it on him. (Our military experiences) are something we never talked about. Lately we’ve been talking about things together,” said David, of Langhorne.

Frenier’s World War II colleague Tony Obert-Thorn of Warrington wasn’t shy about discussing his friend’s accomplishments.

“I’m not a hero, he is,” he said, describing how Frenier risked his life for his fellow soldiers. Obert-Thorn served with Frenier in the Army infantry for some time before he was transferred to the Air Force, where he flew as a radio operator.

Frenier’s oldest son, Craig Frenier of Quakertown, said he was amazed and pleased that both his father and brother received the Silver Star. Craig served with the Navy on a gunboat in Vietnam.

Boy Scout Ray Reinard, a sophomore at Council Rock High School North, also received some recognition on Saturday.

As part of his Eagle Scout project, he planned a way for people to dispose of their old American flags in an honorable way. On Saturday morning, he installed one of his mailbox-shaped metal flag receptacles in the front yard of the Yardley VFW.

“The VFW has a retirement ceremony to respectfully get rid of old flags,” Ray said. The 16-year-old is setting up five of these boxes at local VFWs and American Legion posts and distributing flyers in public places to encourage people to bring in their old flags.

Christopher Desmond, commander of the Yardley VFW, congratulated Ray for his contribution.

Together with the ceremony for Frenier, “this has been the biggest afternoon for our post in a long time,” he said.

By Justin Faulconer Lynchburg News & Advance

Roanoke,Va - The weak economy is causing the National D-Day Memorial to go on the offense in funding its most anticipated event since its 2001 dedication.

Eight years after roughly 22,000 people swarmed the ceremony and President Bush spoke of Bedford’s role in losing the most men in D-Day per capita, the memorial is gearing up for the 65th anniversary June 6.

Shannon Brooks, associate for research and publications, said this year’s event could perhaps be the last chance to properly honor the veterans — the young-est of whom are in their 80s — who served. “From a mathematical point of view, the 70th anniversary really isn’t going to find many of these people here anymore,” Brooks said. “We’re really trying to draw as many veterans, D-Day and World War II, as we can to this event.”

The memorial expects to draw from 6,000 to 8,000 veterans and guests to its four-day anniversary of the anniversary. Seating, shut-tles, shelter, programs, signage and other needs are mounting but now it is harder than ever to seek financial donations because of the state of the economy, Brooks said. “We have been seeking funds for this event since last June but the world is a very different place now and it shows,” she said. “Businesses and corporations are not able to do that amount of giving anymore.” For the first time since opening in 2001, the memorial is host-ing a luminary drive called “Flames of Memory.”

The goal is to sell 500 luminaries, which are small battery-operated bulbs in white bags that would be used to illuminate the memorial’s plaza June 6 after dark to remember the fallen soldiers. “At the end of the day we want people to remember there are a lot of men who never walked away from Normandy that day,” Brooks said. Each luminary costs $20 or six for $100.

Brooks said a goal of selling 500 would secure funds needed for this year’s event. Brooks called the project the memorial’s own “war bond drive”, comparing it to times during World War II when people contributed financially to the war effort. “People are losing their jobs,” she said of the economy. “We know that. Times were hard then, too. But people somehow found a way to look beyond this very frightening present to think about a future.”

The memorial will stay open until 10 p.m. June 6 so visitors can view the nighttime illumination along the necrology wall, which bears the names of all Allied servicemen killed in action during D-day. “Nothing was the same after this day,” said Brooks. “When you look out across the plaza and you see D-Day veterans … we all realize that we’re there to recognize what this tiny fraction of us did for all the rest of us.” The memorial is hoping to sell the luminaries by March 23.

By Agencies

John Demjanjuk was yesterday charged in Germany with more than 29,000 counts of accessory to murder for his time as a guard at the Nazi Sobibor death camp in Poland in 1943. “In this capacity, he participated in the accessory to murder of at least 29,000 people of the Jewish faith,” Munich prosecutors said in a statement after issuing an arrest warrant for the alleged former SS guard.

Demjanjuk, 88, who lives in a Cleveland suburb in the United States, was extradited to Israel in 1986 on suspicion of being the sadistic Nazi guard known as “Ivan the Terrible” of the Treblinka death camp. After being convicted by a lower court, he was then acquitted by the Supreme Court on grounds of doubt. Since the trial evidence has been found to establish Demjanjuk’s SS membership and that he served as a guard in Sobibor. This is what he is expected to face trial for in Germany. Advertisement

Prosecutors will seek the extradition of the retired Ohio auto worker from the United States. Demjanjuk denies involvement.

Efraim Zuroff, Director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center office in Jerusalem, yesterday commended the German prosecutors’ decision and told Haaretz that Demjanjuk’s extradition to Germany could be carried out “within weeks.” A German prosecution spokesman said he could not say whether Demjanjuk would be extradited or deported from the U.S. and when.

A native of Ukraine, Demjanjuk emigrated to the U.S. in 1952 and gained citizenship in 1958. In denying involvement in war crimes, he has said he served in the Soviet army and became a prisoner of war when he was captured by Germany in 1942.

Demjanjuk’s U.S. citizenship was restored in 1998, but the U.S. Justice Department renewed its case, saying he was a Nazi guard and could be deported for falsifying information on his entry and citizenship applications in the 1950s. A December 2005 U.S. court ruling determined that he could be deported to his native Ukraine or to Germany or Poland, but Demjanjuk spent several years challenging that ruling.

Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court chose not to consider Demjanjuk’s appeal against deportation, clearing the way for the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations, which oversees cases against former Nazis, to seek his removal from the United States. But it was unclear which country would take him - his native Ukraine, Poland or Germany.

The Munich prosecutor’s office, which is handling the case because Demjanjuk spent time at a refugee camp in the area after the war, said it was working on the extradition request with the German government. The prosecutors said Demjanjuk will be formally charged before a judge once he is extradited to Germany. Germany started investigating Demjanjuk’s case after the U.S. decided to revoke his citizenship and the Supreme Court rejected his appeal against the deportation.

Sources close to the investigation told Haaretz that the Office of Special Investigations had urged the Germans to open the investigation against Demjanjuk. The German investigators worked on the case together with the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations, and said last year they were “convinced” Demjanjuk served as a guard in the Sobibor camp from March 27 to September 16 in 1943, and was an accomplice to the murder of at least 29,000 Jews.

Demjanjuk is suspected of being part of the SS auxiliary responsible for gathering the ghetto Jews and guarding them in the concentration and death camps, and personally leading Jews to the gas chambers there in 1943.

One of the central pieces of evidence to be brought against Demjanjuk if he is brought to trial in Munich is his SS membership card, whose authenticity has been verified by an expert in the Munich police, Munich’s state prosecutor Anton Winkler said.

Demjanjuk had claimed that the card was forged.

Winkler said last month that his office has been examining evidence against Demjanjuk since December 30, and hopes to have him extradited from the United States for a trial in Germany as soon as possible - possibly in the next month. “We’re working as fast as possible and assume Demjanjuk will be brought to trail here,” Winkler said. “As soon as we have finished preparing the charges, the extradition process will move forward.”

Demjanjuk’s wife Vera told a reporter of the German newspaper Bild that her husband was unwell and not available for an interview. She has been married to John for 60 years and moved with him to America in 1952, where he changed his name from Ivan and got a job with Ford, Bild reported.

Vera told Bild “his brain is not functioning correctly. One day he recognizes everything, the next day he has forgotten it all. He goes to the doctor for injections once a week, otherwise he wouldn’t be around much longer.”

Asaf Uni contributed to this report.