PFC Noel Oakley Price was born on June 13th 1915 in Clover Hill, Virginia. To his parents Oscar W. born in 1881 to his death in 1951 and Lillie May Baldwin born in 1884 to her death in 1958. His parents had a large family of 9 children including Noel. He attended Grammar school and his trade was Carpentering.

PFC Noel Price enlisted in the US Army on May 2nd 1941 in Richmond, Virginia and had the service number 33043038. Eventually, he joined the 29th Infantry Division, 116th Infantry Regiment Company A.

On 6 June 1944, the elite troops of Company A, 116th Infantry, stormed the sands of Omaha Beach as part of the first wave of the D-Day landings. Within minutes, most were dead, including 19 men from one small town in rural Virginia.

At 03:10 on 6 June (the invasion had been postponed for 24 hours due to inclement weather), Companies F and G began climbing into their LCVPs. All first wave landing craft had left the ships by 04:30. At 05:00, a naval and aerial bombardment commenced pounding the German defenses, but the aerial bombardment was ineffective and the naval bombardment failed to destroy most of the German gun emplacements, manned by the 352nd Infantry Division. The landing craft approached Vierville at 06:00, and at 06:36 the ramps of Company A's five surviving boats out of seven were dropped after reaching the assigned sector. There were no shell holes for cover at Dog Green, and within seven minutes Company A was virtually wiped out by either the heavy German fire or from drowning in the surf – by the end of the day, only 18 of 230 members of the company had avoided becoming casualties.

Company G mainly landed on Dog Red after its boats drifted off course from their assigned sector, Dog White. Smoke from grass fires shielded the three or four sections on Dog Red, who suffered few losses to "sporadic and inaccurate" fire as they moved across the tidal flats. Most of Company G reached the shingle intact ten to fifteen minutes after landing, but other boats suffered heavy casualties farther to the east. F Company mostly landed in its assigned sector, Dog Red, directly in front of the strongly fortified German positions at Les Moulins, and was disorganized due to losses of officers. Company E, assigned to Easy Green, ended up east of Fox Green with E Company of the 16th Infantry.

The second wave began at 07:00, landing in a period of forty minutes. Company B waded ashore around 07:26 and suffered heavy casualties, although one of its boat teams took Vierville. By the end of the day Company B had been reduced to 28 men. The regimental command group landed around 07:30 with assistant division commander Brigadier General Norman Cota and Canham. They rallied the men for the attack and around 08:30 Cota discovered an exit off the beach, through which men began advancing. Company D landed off course, running into heavy German fire. Company H suffered heavy losses to German machine gun firing from Les Moulins. Company K landed around 07:50 and elements of the unit ended up pinned down until midday near the Vierville draw. Company L also landed around this time.

Around 9:00 Company K began advancing inland, breaching the seawall but losing fifteen men in a minefield before reaching the crest around 12:30. 111th Field Artillery's guns were lost in the surf and its artillerymen ended up pinned down in front of Les Moulins like 2nd Battalion after landing between 07:30 and 08:30. Company G advanced up the beach between 08:00 and 09:00, meeting the wounded Canham, who was organizing an attack on Vierville. Around 08:30 he and 50 to 60 men moved up a hill to the right of Hamel; this group later joined up with an element of Company B led by Lieutenant Walter Taylor in the attack on the fortified Chateau at Vierville.

PFC Noel Oakley Price was killed in action June 6th 1944 on Ohama Beach. For his actions he received the Purple Heart and buried at Normandy American Cemetery.

Resources:

Noel Oakley Price : Private First Class from Virginia, World War II Casualty (honorstates.org)

PFC Noel Oakley Price (1915-1944) - Find A Grave Memorial

National Archives and Records Administration; Hospital Admission Card Files, ca. 1970 - ca. 1970; NAI: 570973; Record Group Number: Records of the Office of the Surgeon General (Army), 1775-1994; Record Group Title: 112

Ancestry.com. U.S., Headstone and Interment Records for U.S., Military Cemeteries on Foreign Soil, 1942-1949 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2014.

National Archives at College Park; College Park, Maryland, USA; Electronic Army Serial Number Merged File, 1938-1946; NAID: 1263923; Record Group Title: Records of the National Archives and Records Administration, 1789-ca. 2007; Record Group: 64; Box Number: 06022; Reel: 266

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Noel O Price