Ray Nance, last surviving ‘Bedford Boy,‘ dead at 94

The storied journey of the “Bedford Boys” came to an end Sunday with the death of the group’s last surviving member, Ray Nance.

Nance, 94, was among the 35 young men from Bedford who stormed Normandy’s Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944.

In a 2007 interview, Nance recalled the day 65 years ago when he was wounded by shrapnel in his hand and foot. He took cover from machine gun fire in a pool of floating bodies. He watched friends die, he lay on the beach for hours and was ultimately rescued by a sergeant from Roanoke.

Of those 35 Bedford Boys to land on the Nazi-held beaches at the start of the D-Day invasion, 19 died in the first wave and two shortly after. The loss of 21 soldiers in Bedford’s community of 3,200 gave Bedford the highest proportional losses for D-Day, and led to the drive to build the National D-Day Memorial there.

Nance was a member of Company A, 116th Infantry, 29th Division, which included the Bedford Boys. Survivors Earl Newcomb and Roy Stevens died in 2007.

While the group may be gone, members of the Bedford community said the contributions of the men and their imprint on history will live on forever.

When reached yesterday, Lucille Boggess, a close friend of Nance’s who lost two brothers in D-Day, said it was an empty feeling to realize the last of the Bedford Boys was gone.

“It’s a big loss to the community,” she said. “It’s the last of an era, I guess ... I feel everyone in Bedford is going to be saddened by his passing.”

Boggess, who is a National D-Day Memorial Foundation supporter, said she often saw Nance visiting the memorial and it always seemed when he came, he wanted to stay a while.

“Every time I heard him talk about D-Day, he often said he never understood why he left and all the other men died,” Boggess said. “I think he was always a leader. All the men looked up to him.”

Staff writer Justin Faulconer and Media General News Service contributed to this report.