War stories: Tales from a centenarian WWII veteran

OXFORD — On Oct. 2, 2024, Carl Lee Nance Jr. turned 100.

He was in the midst of many birthday celebrations. The Ripley Rotary Club, of which Nance was a longtime member, hosted a birthday lunch for him on Oct. 1. On his birthday, there was a party in the lounge of his independent living community. Oxford Mayor Robyn Tannehill named Oct. 2 "Carl Lee Nance, Junior Day," and Nance's granddaughter Angela Bostelman endowed the Carl Lee Nance, Jr. Scholarship at Ole Miss. The next day, Oct. 3, there was to be a party in Ripley, hosted at the R.L. Nance & Co. hardware store, the Nance family business that Carl Lee ran for much of his life.

"This was a big bonanza," Nance said, sitting on his couch, taking a break from the festivities.

They were celebrations of a full life well-lived, with the hope of many more years still to come. They showed appreciation for a man who not only poured into his local community, but who also defended his country and the free world as a soldier in World War II. There are few enough men from that era left to celebrate.

And on his 100th birthday, Nance took the time to share some of his wartime experiences with this reporter. What follows are his stories.

The beginning

Nance was born and raised in Ripley, Mississippi.

"I was born in my granddaddy's house one block off of the town square," Nance said.

His parents started him in school when he was 5, but he wasn't happy there, and his teachers convinced the Nances to let Carl Lee wait another year for school. Instead of spending that year in class, he spent it shooting birds from his mother's front porch with a BB gun. It was the beginnings of a talent for marksmanship.

The next year he started school, and by the time he reached fifth grade, his teachers decided he needed to move up a year. He switched to the sixth grade class, and it was a good thing he did. That's where he met his future wife.

At age 16, Nance started his undergraduate studies at Ole Miss, where he stayed for two years before he was drafted. He trained at Fort Benning, now Fort Moore, where his platoon broke the record on the moving target range.

"I could strike a match with a .22 rifle," Nance said.

On Aug. 5, 1944, Nance was one of 18,000 troops to board the Queen Elizabeth, headed for Europe. The ship left the harbor on Aug. 6.

"It being August the 6th, you can imagine how hot it was," Nance said. "I was on D deck, which is below sea level. And the body odor and upset-stomach vomiting, you couldn't stand it."

He crawled up the stairs on his hands and knees, out onto the deck where a cool breeze blew, Nance said.

When the ship finally approached Scotland, "when we saw those little fingers of green ... that's the most beautiful thing you have ever seen in your life, that blue ocean and those green little fingers of land coming out of it."

The ship landed at Greenock, Scotland, on the Firth of Clyde, and the soldiers climbed down rope ladders with their 90-pound field packs to reach the little landing vessels.

From there, it was on to England, and then, finally, Nance went to war.

Nance enters the fight in France

Nance crossed the English Channel and landed at Utah Beach as a member of K Company, 301st Regiment, 94th Army Infantry, on Sept. 7, 1944. And throughout Nance's time at war, he experienced a series of close calls and twists of fate that flirted with death.

An example: Early on in his time in France, Nance was on a night patrol, with a scout in the lead. The moon was shining bright, and his unit was on a sidewalk headed up to a little cottage. The scout found a tripwire connected to an anti-personnel mine and called a halt.

"Out of nowhere, a house cat came and brushed past him and hit that wire, and (it) blew up in his face," Nance said.

The scout was sent to a hospital, and Nance was chosen to replace him. He took his place at the front of the column. At an open courtyard, Nance suspected there might be another trap, called a halt, and crept forward to investigate. He hit a tripwire, and a mine exploded.

"I jerked my steel helmet off to see if I had any new holes in my head, and I didn't find any," Nance said. "But my feet started feeling wet. And I looked down, and blood was overflowing out of my combat boots."

Nance was sent back to a tent hospital for the shrapnel in his legs, and after he realized sunlight hurt his left eye badly, a doctor found a piece of shrapnel in there, too. Nance was sent to a hospital in Rennes, France, to have the shrapnel in his eye removed. It took him 10 days to return to his outfit. While he was in the hospital, on his 20th birthday, almost every member of his squad was killed or captured. His injury may well have saved his life.

"I'm here thanks to a house cat and the grace of the Lord," Nance said.

One night, as Nance's unit left the town of Sins, France, artillery was meant to be laying down walking fire for them (meaning they'd fire just ahead of the unit, clearing the way). Suddenly, the unit was being fired upon — Nance wasn't sure whether it was friendly fire or enemy fire or both.

Shrapnel killed the young man on Nance's right; it wounded the lieutenant on Nance's left. Nance heard a piece of shrapnel whip by his ear. The lieutenant told Nance to leave him to the medics and lead the platoon on. So he did. The unit came under fire again, and Nance sheltered behind a big hardwood tree until day broke. Finally, he could see what they were facing. As it turned out, his infantry unit had been walking right into the jaws of the 11th Panzer Division.

Nance heard motors rev to his right, and a group of light American tanks came tearing by to do battle. To his left, wounded Germans covered the ground. One of them was begging to be put out of his misery. Nance couldn't bring himself to do it, but one of his fellow soldiers walked around to where the German couldn't see him and shot the man in the head.

Nance quoted Gen. William Sherman: "War is hell."

The Battle of the Bulge

It was one of the coldest winters on record. When the Battle of the Bulge began in the woods of Ardennes, Nance and his unit were being held in reserve.

"I was eating snow just like a kid," Nance said.

That changed in January 1945, when Nance and his unit were moved to the front lines.

"For 21 days, not to mention the 21 nights, we were in those foxholes, in that deep snow and cold," Nance said.

Nance and his fellows were required to make it back to the cooking area to get one hot meal a day; they were told they wouldn't survive without it. Seven members of his unit lost their feet to frostbite. Water was brought to them on a sled. It was always frozen, and they'd break off pieces of ice to suck on. Lighting a cigarette meant getting shot at.

One day, the sun came out, and the snow melted, flooding the foxholes. Nance had to stay in his flooded foxhole for three more nights, bailing it out with his helmet.

The mortar rounds came down like rain, Nance said, according to a 2019 Mississippi legislature resolution honoring his life and service. "It's a gut-wrenching feeling to be standing with explosive rounds falling all around you," the resolution reads. "The rounds that didn't hit the ground hit the trees and sent a shower of razor-sharp shrapnel screaming down on you."

Once, a shell exploded no more than 10 feet (and maybe fewer) above Nance's head, he told the Daily Journal.

"The guy digging a foxhole said, 'You're supposed to be dead,'" Nance shared. "I said, 'That's just what I was thinking.'"

Nance's theory is that someone conscripted into building German ammunition purposefully sabatoged the shell.

On another occasion, Nance was standing by his sergeant, between their two foxholes, when they realized shells were coming. They were too far from their own foxholes, but there was a third one between them. They both dove for it. Nance was just a little faster, and the sergeant landed atop Nance. Shrapnel killed the sergeant.

"If I'd been slower, he'd be telling this," Nance said.

Not long after that, Nance became the face of K Company, in a way. There was so much turnover, his was the only consistent face. When people spotted him, they knew they were encountering K Company.

More stories from the war

Once, in a town that Nace did not share the name of, Nance and his men were holed up in a little building, their captain in another building across the road. The captain sent a runner, who told Nance to send his men across, one at a time. Up the street was a German pillbox disguised as a cottage.

Nance started sending men across. One man went, and the Germans fired at him, but he made it safely through. So, Nance sent the next man, and the next, until they'd all made it safely despite the German fire, and he was about to make the crossing himself. Before he could move, though, the captain's runner took off, crossing the road. He barely made it a yard.

"That machine gun opened up and hit him in the thigh three times," Nance said. "Well, I was a bird hunter. That would have ended my days of bird hunting right there."

As the Allies, Nance among them, swept over Germany, he watched German prisoners marched down highways. He saw boxcars full of displaced civilians being shipped home.

"Oh, pitifulest thing you've ever seen is displaced persons," Nance said. "It is a pitiful sight to see humans being treated just like cattle."

The war ends

Nance was in Czechoslovakia on V-E Day. He shared a bottle of wine with a Czech officer.

"We were pretty damned pleased, of course," Nance said. "We whupped the Heinies' heinies."

Nance retired from the Army as a staff sergeant. After returning to the United States, he finished his degree at Ole Miss, then went home to Ripley and joined the family business, working in the family hardware store and the family funeral home. (R.L. Nance & Co. was founded in 1902.)

On June 10, 1951, Nance married his wife, Virginia. "I had a marriage made in heaven," Nance said. "We were meant to be."

Nance and Virginia raised two sons together. The eldest, Carl Lee Nance III, was born June 15, 1952 — Nance became a father on Father's Day.

Nance has traveled through the U.S., Europe, Mexico, and the Carribean. Throughout his life, he remained a hunter and outdoorsman. His marksmanship never flagged, either. On his 88th birthday, Nance shot a squirrel in the head with no scope, his granddaughter Bostelman said.

"Been a lot of places and seen a lot of things," Nance said. "Have you talked to anybody that's lived a fuller life than I have?"