The Last of the Bedford Boys

There was a touching story published in the Richmond Times Dispatch on June 6, 2007 about Ray Nance, the last of the famed "Bedford Boys" that stormed the beach at Normandy on D-Day. Nineteen of the young men cut down that day were from the small central Virginia town of Bedford. The saying has been oft repeated that Bedford suffered the greatest loss of any town in the U.S. that day, per capita.

I grew up about 20 miles from Bedford and my uncle trained with Company A, but went into Normandy on D-Day plus one. Before D-Day was over 90 per cent of Company A was dead or wounded and Ray Nance was their lieutenant. He is now 93 years old and failing.

His life since D-Day has been haunted by bad dreams but sleep comes easier now, the ravages of time offering blessed forgetfulness.

Ray Nance, who is about to turn 93, sleeps peacefully, largely because his failing memory no longer summons many images from June 6, 1944, when 19 young Bedford men were killed on the beach at the start of the D-Day invasion.

During recent interviews, the memory that shone through brightest for Nance was his rescue from the beach, where he had lain wounded for hours.

"I looked up, and there was a sergeant -- he was from Roanoke -- he said, 'Get up on my back, and I'll take you out of here,'" Nance recalled. "He carried me almost piggy-back all the way along the beach, maybe 300 yards. And don't you know, there wasn't a shot fired at us."

I went to high school in Bedford and have been well schooled in the sacrifices of that day and the way that little town was torn apart. I recall the story of the Western Union telegrapher taking notice after notice of the deaths and how they just wouldn't stop coming.

I went to school and grew up with their cousins and nephews and nieces. Some of my teachers were their sisters. And now all the boys of Company A are gone, but one, and he's fading away and soon he'll be gone.

Until a few years ago, those memories haunted Nance's dreams. He would wake up and replay the events in his head, asking himself what he might have done differently to save some of his men. Nance was a lieutenant.

But he can no longer access those dark memories, he and his wife, Alpha, said in recent interviews. As a result, his wife said, "Ray is much more at peace."

Nance, who still has a boyish face and penetrating blue eyes, said he would prefer to remember everything -- "the good and the bad." Then he added, "Maybe some things are better forgotten."

Ray Nance still visits the National D-Day Memorial that sits on a beautiful hillside there in Bedford on a weekly basis with Alpha, his wife of 62 years. He is a smiling and pleasant gentleman and the last time I saw him was at the memorial about a year ago.

These men weren't heroes, they were just teenagers and young men answering the call when their country needed them. But when you think of what they accomplished, those cut down so young, the ones that have passed on and the one that is now left, they ended up being giants.

Jim Martin