PVT William E. Ash
Today we honor and remember PVT William E. Ash of the 101st Airborne Division.
Private (PVT) William Elza Ash of Headquarters Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment (PIR), 101st Airborne Division, was born in Rockcastle County, Kentucky, to McKinley and Ida (Allen) Ash on August 2, 1920.
William was the eldest of five children. He had three sisters, Dorothy, Mildred, and Helen, and one brother, Randolph Ash. Randolph served as a Technician Fifth Grade with Baker Company, 804th Tank Destroyer Battalion during WWII.
In 1925, the family moved to Middletown, Ohio, where his father McKinley took a job as a papermaker at a local paper mill. According to the 1940 Census, William had followed in his father’s footsteps, also becoming a papermaker. He registered for the draft on February 16, 1942, and in the meantime, had changed jobs to work at Sam Painters Garage in his hometown.
William enlisted in the U.S. Army in Cincinnati on August 17, 1942. Prior to entering the service, he had been with the Ohio National Guard for three years.
According to the Dayton Herald, William was one of fifteen local men trained either as a paratrooper or glidermen at Fort Benning, Georgia, and Camp Mackall, North Carolina. These men also participated at maneuvers in Tennessee and the Carolinas.
In April 1944, William arrived in England and was assigned as a machine gunner to the HQ Company, 2nd Battalion. On D-Day, he jumped into Normandy where PVT David Kenyon Webster was the last one to meet him alive. Webster described the encounter in his book Parachute Infantry.
He came across Private Ash when the two of them landed in the same flooded field behind Utah Beach.
“As I came up to the tree-covered mound, I heard someone call my name, ‘Webster! Webster!’ I looked around and saw little Ash lying on the ground.” Ash had hurt his ankle badly when he touched French soil. Ash did not want to move as Webster tried to persuade him to go to a piece of higher ground about fifty yards away across a channel. “I said this jump was going to be my last, Web, and it was. You go on. I’m staying here.” Webster reacted, “They’ll kill you. Better get out of here while the coast is clear.” “So long, buddy,” Ash said to Webster, who wrote about the last moments they were together, “He gave me his hand, and I shook it hard. I could not understand what had come over him.”
Two months later, back in England, Webster heard what had happened to Ash from others.
Apparently Private Ash had changed his mind and decided to swim across the 20-yard-wide channel to reach the higher ground. As Webster continued,
“The move was his undoing, for there were still plenty of Germans left in the woods after the rest of us had gone on. Ash went to the stone stable where I had rested briefly and lay down with the wounded men collected there in an impromptu aid station. Here the Germans found him and the others, and swarming in without mercy, killed them all.”
Stories like that had spread from mouth to mouth among the paratroopers who landed in Normandy on June 6, 1944, but so far it has not been confirmed Ash actually died that way. No matter what had happened to Ash, Webster had lost a dear friend:
“Ash had a small, sad, prematurely wizened face to match his small body. He was one of the few men who knew they were going to die on D-Day, knew it just as we all know that we are going to die but not exactly when. He said his first combat jump would be his last, and so it was. I missed him very much; the machine-gun platoon was not the same without him.”
Another Screaming Eagle had soared to the ultimate height. 🦅
PVT William Ash rests eternally at Woodside Cemetery and Arboretum, Middletown, Butler County, Ohio. May he rest in peace.
His enlistment record mentions he was “divorced with dependents” and that he had a child, confirmed by a newspaper article that reported his death:
William not only left behind his parents, three sisters, and a brother but also a son. Let’s hope he has found peace in his heart with the loss of his father.
Happy Birthday in Heaven, William.
Lest we forget. 🇺🇸