Elisha Ray Nance

Elisha Ray Nance
Born	26 June 1914 Bedford, Virginia
Died	19 April 2009 United States of America
Occupation(s)	Lieutenant in A Company, 116th Infantry Regiment, of the 29th Infantry Division (United States).

Elisha Ray Nance was a Lieutenant in A Company, 116th Infantry Regiment, of the 29th Division on Omaha beach on D-Day. He was one of the few surviving officers of the company of that morning.

Childhood

26 June 1914 - Birth

On 26 June 1914 Elisha Ray Nance was born in Bedford, Virginia, in the United States of America.

Adulthood

Before July 1943

During training of the other troops, some of the men in Company A, including Raymond S Hoback, were trained by Nance. He thought that they were good men, and that they were the finest soldiers he ever saw.

July 1943

After Nance had went on leave and come back he discovered that A Company would become more than just an infantry company. Now, the Company began being trained as an amphibious outfit, with assault teams, demolitions, and used the gear and equipment for such. This is possibly around the time that Ray became the Company Executive Officer.

Before 6 June 1944 - Preparation for training in Operation Neptune

At some point while the Company and the rest of the 1st Battalion was training, the company commanders, including Captain Taylor N. Fellers were called together, by what would have been a colonel, to be told what they were to be doing in Operation Neptune. They would have been told that they were going to land on the beach and assault the positioned areas that the Germans were holding. Captain Fellers objected to what they were going to do, and, out of character, told the colonel:

Colonel, I can take one Browning automatic rifle and get on that cliff and deny that beach to any infantry group

Later on Captain Fellers told Ray Nance that he told the colonel:

Colonel, I can take one Browning automatic rifle and get on that cliff and deny that beach to any infantry group

Ray thought that this was out of character for him to say that. He then later on told Ray:

Ray, we'll all be killed!

During the preparations for the landings before the landings, if Nance wasn't the Company Executive Officer yet, he would have become such:

6 June 1944 - Operation Neptune

Approximately 0300 - Company A circles around

At around 0300 6 June, while they were twelve miles out from the beach, the boats of A Company and at least Company B (since Ray later goes in with B Company), circled around waiting until the sun illuminated the scene. Company A on its own had seven LCAs for landing. of which six were to be in the first wave, and the seventh, the one that Ray was aboard, was the boat carrying Company Headquarters, which was to land with B Company. In total, including or not including Lieutenant Nance, there were seventeen or eighteen A Company soldiers on the boat. Of this included the medic Cecil Breeden, as well as John Reynolds and John Clifton (A Company's Cassanova), the latter two of which were from Bedford. As per divisional orders, an officer was to jump out of the boat first. In this case for Nance's boat, he was the one to jump out first.

Possibly around 0500 - The sun lights the area

At around 0500 the outside was illuminated enough that the Companies wouldn't have to keep waiting and could go. As a result the company would have begun its way to the beach. En route to the beach, boat number five was lost at sea.

0636 - A Company drops the ramps, the massacre begins

At 0636, at what Raymond thought was 6:30, the first ramps of A Company dropped.

Between 0636 and 0645

Between 0636 and 0645, while Nance's boat along with the B Company boats were still out from the shore, Nance caught his first glimpse of the beach, through a slit up at what would have been the front of the boat. He thought that it seemed like there was a pall of smoke or dust hanging over the beach.

0645 - Boat number seven with Ray Nance and the rest of A Company, along with B Company boats, land

At 0645, nineteen minutes after A Company landed, the Company Headquarters boat along with B Company, reached the beach at exactly the time that was planned. The British coxswain/bowman of boat number seven, who was standing in a steel compartment in the front of the ramp a few feet right from Nance, had brought them to exactly where they were ordered to be. He pulled the latch release lever, and the ramp started going down but stopped. Nance shouted to him to him:

Get it down!

The coxswain then yanked the latch release a couple more times, Lt Nance gave the ramp a shove, and then it finally went down. The British coxswain said:

Up and at 'em mates,

Nance then made two steps on the ramp, and then jumped as far as he could forward into the water. At first when he landed the water line was up to his chest, but then a wave came in crashing down and almost submerging him and now the water was up to his neck. He began wading forward up to the beach, with his soaked pack pulling him down and his rifle above his head, for what seems to him to have been fifteen to twenty yards. After that he dropped on the cold sand out of breath and began to look around for anyone of A Company. He couldn't see anyone, no one in front of him, and no one behind him. He would have thought:

Where was everybody? Where was A Company?

He felt terribly isolated and kept struggling up the beach. He didn't figure out what happened to the Company until he got into high water. Before he did so, he was shot three times. He then turned around and saw bodies strewn across the sands as well as in the shallow water so thick in the amount of bodies that they were bumping against each other. He looked around and saw nobody. The men of his boat that were behind him were killed or back around the boat.

Sometime after 0645

A little after looking around for anyone, finally some people showed up around Nance. On the right of him was one of his runners, and on the left was his radioman Clifton, who was still carrying his radio on his back. Nance thought that he should dump it quick. Nance then shouted:

Keep moving, keep moving

Clifton then cried out to him:

I'm hit,

Ray looked at him and thought he looked good. He asked Clifton:

Can you move?

Clifton did not respond. Nance ducked and then looked back again and didn't see Clifton. Ray could see four men from the 29th Reconnaissance behind one of the steel tank obstacles. He shouted at them:

Spread out!

While he was saying that, a German mortar came in and killed three of them while severely wounding the other. Ray couldn't see a single German ahead. He fired a few rounds with his rifle towards the bluffs, but then a mortar shell exploded nearby, a piece of the mortar's shrapnel taking a chunk out of Ray's rifle just a few inches from his face. Ray co1uld also see Lieutenant Emil Winkler of B Company to his right, and him and some other men were mown down by machine gun fire, Winkler being killed among them.

Nance might have seen at this point that none of the thirty-two men of boat number two had survived, which included Captain Bellegin, of which he thought that the demolitions on board the boat could have exploded. Therefore out of the six boats of Company A (excluding his), number 5 and 2 were lost.

He possibly also saw or maybe later found out that two boats of Company B had mislanded on Dog White sector, which was where G Company was supposed to land but didn't land there. The two boats and the men on board came in without much difficulty. Then C Company mislanded right behind them.

After almost having his face blown off by shrapnel, German tracer fire spurted towards Nance, kicking up sand, and ricocheting off the stones, stitching the hard beach with bullets. The Germans had spotted him and were trying to zero in on him. The German machine gun, which was from the bunker to the right of the Vierville draw and halfway up the bluffs, started up again aiming towards him.

Nance positioned himself so that he was facing the machine gun head on, which provided the Germans less of a target. If he got hit, then he would be quickly dead, a shot in the head. He looked again at his rifle and deemed it completely useless as wet sand had gotten in the workings of it.

Nance held his breath as the sound of the machine gun bullets increasingly got louder. His body began to shake with terror. Another burst of bullets came. He then looked to the right and saw a rifleman of Company A sprinting on his feet trying to escape the machine gun volleys. He then recognized who it was, it was John Reynolds, twenty-two years old. Reynolds then stopped, knelt down, and raised his rifle to return fire to the Germans. Before he got the chance to pull the trigger, Nance saw him fall dead.

The German bullets finally stopped firing across the beach towards Nance. It is possible the German machine gun operators found someone else running. Retreat wasn't possible for anyone on the beach, and all that could be done was to move forward. Ray began to crawl forward and was aiming for the cliff-face three hundred yards away. The bullets started to stitch the sand again heading in his direction, and all the sudden he felt like Frank Draper Jr. had wacked him in his right foot with a baseball bat. Part of his heel had been shot away. Suddenly, when Nance thought that there was no more hope left, he looked up at the sky, and although he didn't see anything, he felt like something settled over him, and got a warm feeling, as if somehow he was going to live.

Nance laid as still as he could in hoping that the German machine gunner would think that he was dead. However even dead corpses weren't safe from the machine gunners. The German machine gunner would shoot some bullets in Nance's direction, then target someone else, and then come back to Nance. To Nance it seemed like the machine gunner was playing cat and mouse with him. He then tried in vain to dig a shallow foxhole in the shingle and sands with his hands. He then spotted a tidal pool, and he thought that it looked deep enough for a man to hide from the gunners. He began crawling as fast as he could, crawling into the warm water of the pool. He then filled his lungs and ducked down. All the sudden his WWI binocular case strap was pierced by a bullet. He ducked down again and then again. Some time later on he came up for air and saw a New Yorker soldier not too far from him. Right then the machine gun bullets began coming back his way again, and so he turned to face them head on. He told the soldier from New York to do the same, and as a result, the bullets were starting to be shot somewhere else. The two then scrambled their way across the last yards towards the cliff, and were finally able to reach the shingle now beneath them. Then Nance collapsed with blood pouring from his foot. It didn't seem to matter as much, as he was now safe. He looked back out at the sea, and could recognize the bodies of two dead officers, who were on their backs facing up lying in the water. A lot of the men had been caught by the tide coming in. It had crept up behind nance, and drowned men of Company A that no longer had more strength to crawl forward. Laying on the pebbled under Vierville, he still felt responsable for every last one of them.

Approximately 1000

The two sections of B Company that had landed at Dog White were able to get through the barbed wire and then the plateau. C Company then followed up behind and they were able to come up into the Vierville ridge by 1000. By that time the firing onto the remainder of A Company as well as B Company finally almost ceased due to the two B Company sections and C Company coming behind the Germans. Nance thought that they were the ones that saved the men on the beach with him.

Then or sometime later Reed came by Nance and was talking to a medic when he told Nance what he had seen. He explained to Nance that he had seen Feller's body, and at that moment Nance realized that he was Company Commander. He couldn't see a man with a weapon around, to Nance it was a peculiar feeling.

Before or during 1994

Drez (1994). Voices of D-Day : the story of the Allied invasion told by those who were there. p. 41.

Before or during the year 1994, Ray and many other veterans of D-Day, were interviewed for a project that would be turned into a book by Ronald J. Drez who was collaborating with Stephen E. Ambrose. The oral histories would be stored at the Eisenhower Center, University of New Orleans. Here the first thing that he said during his interview:

This actually began in the month of July, 1943. I went on leave and when I left, we were infantry, just a plain old infantry company, and when I got back from leave, we got in gear and became like assault teams, demolition, and stuff like that. That was in July, the beginning of that training as an amphibious outfit.

This is another thing that he said:

When the company commanders were called and the battalion commander told them where they were going, what they were going to do, etcetera, my company commander, Taylor Fellers, told me later that he said, "Colonel, I can take one Browning automatic rifle and get on that cliff and deny that beach to any infantry group." And he wasn't a fellow that normally talked like that, and later he said, "Ray, we'll all be killed!"

Afterwards he possibly explained that he became the Company Executive Officer, and said:

We circled a lot. About twelve miles out. From about three o'clock, we circled until it started getting light, which must have been around five. We landed at six-thirty.

Later on he said:

The first sight I got of the beach, I was looking through sort of a slit up there, and it looked like a pall of dust or smoke hanging over the beach

Then sometime after that he said during the interview:

I went in with B Company, which actually was ninteen minutes after A Company. I was the first one off. It was a division order that an officer be the first man to go off the boat. When it touched the bottom, our coxswain brought us in right precisely where he was supposed to, and he was in front of that ramp in a steel compartment, and he pulled the latch release, and the ramp didn't go down. I said, "Get it down," and he yanked it a couple more times and it dropped, and then I pushed and made two steps on that ramp and jumped as far as I could into the water. The water was first up to my chest , and then a wave came and put it up to my neck, and I walked in and went up on the beach about fifteen to twenty yards. My boat was the Company Headquarters boat, and it was in with B Company—seventeen of us on that boat.
When I got up there and dropped and I looked around in front and all around—I mean not a soul. Nobody in front. Where was everybody? Where was A Company? I didn't know until I got in above high water what happened to A Company. I turned around and saw bodies in the water—they were bumping against one another it was so thick. There was nobody in sight. I turned and looked—nobody in sight, nobody behind me.
The people who came off with me were somewhere back—killed, or back around that boat; and then later, I started towards the high water, towards the shore. A little later a few people showed up around me. Over on the right was one of my runners, and over on the left was my radio man, Clifton, and he called me and said he'd been hit, and I looked at him and he looked pretty good, and I asked him "Can you move?" and I was hit three times before I got to the high water-mark.
Four men from the 29th Recon were behind one of those steel jack things, and I yelled for them to scatter out, and no sooner than I said that, a mortar round came in and killed three of them and wounded the other. I saw Lieutenant Winkler of B Company; he was on my right, and they were going down just like hay dropping before the scythe, just mown down, and Winkler was killed.
Of our six assault boat sections, mine was the seventh; we lost number 5 at sea. Another one, number 2, with Captain Bellegin on it—there were thirty-two men on; not one single person is known to have survived. It could have exploded with all the demolitions on board, too. So we lost the number 5 and number 2 boats out of six boats of Company A

Then after that he described:

There were two things that saved us. There were two teams mislanded by Company B in Dog White Beach. G Company was supposed to land there. Not a single G Company man landed there. Those two boats from B got in fairly easily, and just a little later C Company came in and mislanded right behind. They all got up through the barbed wire and went up that plateau which sloped up into the Vierville ridge, and C Company followed those two sections up there and were in Vierville by ten o'clock. That is what saved us, because on the beach the fire almosted stopped, because they were behind the Germans.

Finally he made this description in the interview:

Reed came by and was talking to a medic, and he came by and was telling me what he'd seen. And he told me he'd seen Captain Feller's body, and it suddenly hit me that I was company commander—and not a man in sight with a weapon. That's a peculiar feeling.

Before or during 2003

He said during an interview with Alex Kershaw:

The Germans were so accurate with those things, they could put one in your back pocket if they spotted you.

I recognized two officers. They were face up, lying in the water. A lot of men were caught by the tide. Had we been on dry land, a lot of men would have made it.

Bibliography

1. "Elisha Ray Nance". WWII Archives. 10 May 2023.
2. "Elisha Ray Nance (1914-2009) - Find a Grave Memorial". Findagrave. 19 April 2009.
3. Kershaw, Alex (1994). The Bedford boys : one American town's ultimate D-Day sacrifice (1st ed.). Cambridge: Da Capo Press. ISBN 0306811677.
4. Drez, Ronald J (1994). Voices of D-Day : the story of the Allied invasion told by those who were there (1st ed.). Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press. ISBN 0807119024.