Posted on 06/06/2013 9:04:00 AM PDT by Kaslin
It made the papers, but was covered far from sufficiently, when Elisha “Ray” Nance died a few years ago at the age of 94. You may never have heard of him, but he was well known around Bedford, Virginia, a picturesque town located at the feet of the Blue Ridge Peaks of Otter. He delivered mail in that neck of the woods for many years. But it was for what he did before becoming a letter carrier that he should be best remembered.
Ray Nance was one of The Bedford Boys.
In fact, he was the last surviving member of his town’s contingent in Company A of the 29th Infantry Division’s 116th Infantry – a group that waded ashore on a beach nicknamed Omaha in a far away place called Normandy, 69 years ago. And of the 30 soldiers from Bedford, then with a population of 3,200 (today, about twice that), he was one of only eight from his hometown who lived to tell the story.
Ray lost 22 Bedford buddies that day, 19 of them in the very first moments of the battle. By the time he made it to the beach in the last of his company’s landing crafts to reach that point, he saw “a pall of dust and smoke.” He could barely see “the church steeple we were supposed to guide on.” He couldn’t see anyone in front, or behind him; only that he “was alone in France.” Mr. Nance was a hero “proved through liberating strife.”
In so many ways, it’s a different world today. But interestingly – even ironically – the challenges of our times are not completely unlike those days when bands of citizen-soldier-brethren from the greatest generation saved the world for those of us who would later be born to abundance and liberty.
Next to ingratitude, forgetfulness is the most serious indicator of cultural decline; and in truth, the two are intertwined. Thankfulness and remembrance are flipsides of the same precious cultural coin.
It always bothers me when leaders—those born out of due time—seem to apologize for America and our various endeavors to make this world a better (read: more free) place.
I find myself thinking back to a moment 29 years ago when, on the 40th anniversary of D-Day, President Ronald Reagan captured the attention of history and honored some of the other “Boys” who did so much for all of us on June 6, 1944. He called them “The Boys of Pointe Du Hoc,” and many of them were in his cliff-top audience in Normandy that day—June 6, 1984.
If you wanted to pick a more foreboding, certainly unlikely, place for an important military attack, you’d be hard-pressed to come up with a spot more uninviting than the imposing, rugged cliffs overlooking the English Channel four miles west of Omaha Beach. A few years ago, I had the privilege of visiting the Normandy region for a speaking engagement. I stood on the spot where the Great Communicator spoke and tried to wrap my mind around the quite-evident impossibility of what the United States Army Ranger Assault Group accomplished that fateful day. Mr. Reagan honored those men there:
We stand on a lonely, windswept point on the northern shore of France. The air is soft, but 40 years ago at this moment, the air was dense with smoke and the cries of men, and the air was filled with the crack of rifle fire and the roar of canon....Behind me is a memorial that symbolizes the Ranger daggers that were thrust into the top of these cliffs. And before me are the men who put them there. These are the boys of Pointe Du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war.
Now, all these years later, we mark another anniversary of D-Day. But the boys of Bedford are now all gone. And noble ranks of the boys of Pointe Du Hoc have been thinned out by the course of time, as well. So, what happens when those who really remember are no longer around to remind us? What happens when eyewitness memory is no longer vivid and available and we must resort to stories handed down from generations before?
This is where (and why) memorials come in, monuments to important men and moments of a sacred and so-easily-forgotten past.
It has been a dozen years since the national D-Day Memorial opened in June of 2001 in that tiny Virginia town of Bedford, a community that gave so proportionately of its finest young men so many years ago. A while back, my wife and I, along with other family members, visited the D-Day Memorial. I talked to my grandkids about it all. The man who took us around was Mr. James E. Bryant. He had served as a Glider Infantryman with the 82nd Airborne Division and was part of all of his division’s campaigns from D-Day through to the end of the European war in May of 1945. He wrote a book about it all called, Flying Coffins Over Europe. I purchased a copy in the Memorial’s gift shop and asked him to sign it for me. I was honored and humbled to be in his presence. Really.
So, today I find myself missing the eloquence of Ronald Reagan and remembering how he honored “the Boys.” I also ponder the Great Communicator’s words from that inspirational speech in Normandy:
Strengthened by their courage, heartened by their valor, and borne by their memory, let us continue to stand for the ideals for which they lived and died.
Amen!
“The Boys Who Saved the World for the Rest of Us”
And then their kids and grandkids threw it all away.
Imagine the assault on Omaha Beach today with women and openly gay troops as well as political correctness commissars. Thankfully there are still many brave young Americans who would follow the example of their grandfathers in storming the beaches.
I posted on another thread:
One thing I am tired of is aggregate Baby Boomer bashing. I am a BB and was raised by GG’ers. I am basically a GG’er. I know many BB’s that are exactly like me a clone of their parents. I honor the same things my parents did and despise the same things they do. The BB’s that are they type that people like to condemn were raised by the same kind of GG’ers that people rail against today, selfish and detached. You are a product of how you were raised and there are a great many GG’ers that dropped the ball, blame them.
The slide this country started taking started long before any BB’s were holding office. The seeds of socialism were plant as far back as Woodrow Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt’s days.
FDR also a huge socialist
Their kids threw it all away.
Thank God He remembers it all and their lives, each life sacrificed for their brothers, is the greatest love and will be rewarded eternally. This truth is what gives true meaning to life and without it comes despair.
I look forward to meeting them all. SYOTOS see you on the other side.
Actually when you look at what destroyed the West, the immigration laws and socialism, it was done long before boomers took over the governments of the West.
Another odd thing, is that people totally ignore the generation before the boomers, the generation of the 1960s, the McCain, Fonda, Bob Dylan, Doors, Beatles, Bill Ayers, Chicago Seven, Jimi Hendrix generation.
Good Post Kas. As one writer put it ‘where do we get men like this ?’......GOD bless America.....(hint: He has)
Thanks
Strengthened by their courage, heartened by their valor, and borne by their memory, let us continue to stand for the ideals for which they lived and died....
These principles apply now more than ever to the current assault on our liberties by the “Enemy within”...
>>>Another odd thing, is that people totally ignore the generation before the boomers, the generation of the 1960s, the McCain, Fonda, Bob Dylan, Doors, Beatles, Bill Ayers, Chicago Seven, Jimi Hendrix generation. >>>
I’ve always likened the ‘60’s to the Children’s Crusade against the Moslems of the 13th Century. The children never returned home; they died of diseases, capture, starvation and killing. So many of the ‘60s children met the same deaths.
Some who survived the ‘60s stayed home, others are lost to their families. The big difference is the introduction of illegal drugs.
Well many were dying in Vietnam and later in Desert Storm, Iraq and Afghanistan, the boomers produced close to 9.5 million veterans.
Many don’t know that the democrats only got 47% of the under 30 vote in 1968 (which was almost entirely silent generation), and 46% in 1972 (which was almost entirely boomers), also the age group that most supported the Vietnam war was the under 30 age group, not the older generations.
In 1978, I went to France as an exchange student. The first week I was there, we had an orientation. As part of the orientation, we went up to a bird preserve in Normandy. For lunch, our teachers gave us bread and butter and let us scatter over the beach.
I was in a small group of teens who decided to climb up on top of a bunker. Sitting there on the bunker, overlooking the waves washing up on the beach, we talked about how delicious the bread and butter was—the fresh bread made without preservatives, the sweet creamy butter. We all agreed that it was the best bread and butter, so much better than anything we had ever tasted in America.
I remember that day so well, because our conversation was so mundane when contrasted with the events that had occurred at that exact place less than half a century before.
The memories of WWII were still vivid in France at the time I was an exchange student there. I was even the target of gratitude for what the American soldiers had done there... which made me feel really awkward, since I had not been born yet when all that happened.
My sister’s family and my parents were in Normandy in 2002...STILL had locals coming up to them and thanking the US. *sigh* My sister says she was so overwhelmed with emotions. We really have no idea. (that’s a very general “we”....not intended for people to get offended)
Thanks for posting. I bet that is something, you will never forget
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