" Fellers had studied the Allied intelligence and countless aerial shots and concluded that Company A was being sent to face certain slaughter.

Fellers and Nance both looked out to sea.

"We stood there awhile," recalled Nance. "We didn't say a word, not a single word to each other. I guess we'd said it all.

An anti-aircraft gun broke the silence, tracer bullets spitting through the sky, and then a searchlight caught the blaze of an exploding plane. "That brought it home to me," recalled Nance. "This thing is real. It's not an exercise. "

― Alex Kershaw , The Bedford Boys: One American Town's Ultimate D-Day Sacrifice