Major Raymond Phillips Elledge Jnr 18042665

506th Fighter Squadron, 404th Fighter Group, 9th Airforce, USAAF

Summary

Raymond Phillips Elledge Jnr was born in 1920 in Texas – his father was a trainee lawyer. He was a college student when he enlisted in April 1941. On a mission to attack tanks near the Vire-Periers road on the 18th of July 1944 he was shot down and captured. A couple of days later he escaped with Willen, Sheppard and Gillespie. With the aid of locals, they evaded for a week before being recaptured near Villers Bocage.

Via “the Shed” and other places he is taken to Dulag Luft near Frankfurt where he is lightly interrogated then given supper, alongside Lt Col Francis Gabreski and others, by Hans Scharff. He is then an inmate of Stalag Luft III until moved in the Long March of early 1945 to Moosburg.

On return to Houston, Texas, he continues his training as a lawyer and brings up a family. He was a well-known amateur golfer. On retiring from the law, he turned a recipe for gingerbread he had developed into a business – trading as Daddy Ray’s Famous Gingerbread. He died in 1994 whilst in recovery following an operation.

[See the pictures – click on the images to enlarge them]

Early Life

Elledge was born in Sugar Land, Fort Bend County, Texas on the 29th of November 1920. His father, who had been seriously wounded whilst serving in France in WW1, was a trainee lawyer.

He married his college sweetheart “Wheezie” in 1942, and his first daughter was born whilst he was overseas.

Service Life

[See Elledge in P47 Thunderbolt]

Elledge enlisted on the 26th of April 1941.

He suffered a serious training accident in which he put his survival down to his aircraft hitting squarely between two trees – the impact shearing off both wings bringing it to a halt. This would hold him in good stead later when he had to belly out in Normandy.

He adopted the practice of naming his aircraft after his wife in some way – the last being “Miss Woo”.

From June 1942 Elledge spent six months in Alaska during the Aleutian Islands Campaign, flying a P-39 Airacobra – and wrote a short account of his time there.

In 1943, after a period of home service, he volunteered for overseas deployment – arriving in England in March 1944.

[See Elledge and P39 Airacobra]

Time in Normandy

Elledge’s Squadron – 506th Fighter Squadron, part of the 404th Fighter Group – moved to Normandy in early July.

[See the 506th Squadron Insignia]

On the 18th of July 1944 Elledge takes off from advanced landing strip ALG-A5, known as La Chippelle, on a mission to deal with a concentration of tanks near the Periers-Vire Road. Flying over the target area for the second time he was hit by flak and had to belly in. Too low to parachute he stayed with the aircraft firing off his guns as he descended. Remembering his training experience, he aimed between two trees achieving a similar result. During the landing he banged his head on the hatch suffering lacerations. He ran from the aircraft through two fields and dived into a ditch where some minutes later he was captured by the Germans.

[See the Advanced Landing Ground A5 – La Chipelle]

PoW Life

After being kept overnight in a schoolhouse with two other servicemen he was taken to the Nunnery (a.k.a. the Monastery or Starvation Hill) at Chappelle sur Vire. Here he met up with Gillespie (who he knew as they were in the same Fighter Group), and parachutists Sheppard and Willen. The four of them escaped the next day. They evaded until the 28th of July when they were recaptured a little north of Villers Bocage. Marched for a couple of hours, the four were accommodated overnight in a barn. Harder joined them the next day and they were further marched to “the Shed” were they stayed for a day and a half before being moved on.

Eventually, following various moves including a six-day train journey from Paris to Frankfurt, Elledge arrives at Dulag Luft at Obersel – the main interrogation centre for allied airmen. Here he was subtly interrogated by Hanns Scharff, who introduced him to Lt Col Francis Gabreski – the leading American ace in Europe. Elledge already knew Gabreski slightly. Later the same day he was to partake in a pleasant supper with Scharff, another German interrogator, Gabreski, Captain Jake Stanford and an unnamed British airman, consisting of good soup, meat sandwiches, cheese, and flagons of beer, before beginning his transit to Stalag Luft III.

In January 1945 Elledge took part in “the Long March”. The inmates of Stalag Luft III were on the road for less than many, and some of them, including Elledge, were transported by rail rather than marched after the first week.

He ends up at Moosburg which was subsequently liberated by American troops in April.

Elledge wrote an entertaining account of his time from taking off on his final combat flight to his return home – referred to as “the manuscript” from which a lot of our knowledge of the events comes.

Post War

On being released from the Airforce he returned to training for the law.

The planned joint practice with his father was cut short when the latter died in 1949, so Elledge joined a practice with his uncle.

He had three further children.

On retiring from the law, he decided to set up a company to produce gingerbread from a recipe he had developed over the years based on one from his wife’s family. The company traded under the name Daddy Ray’s Famous Gingerbread which was registered as a trademark. The name comes from what Elledge was called by his grandchildren. The firm traded until 2022 run by family members.

[See Daddy Ray Elledge & Weezie Elledge]

Elledge was an excellent golfer and was well known on the Texas amateur circuit.
He died on the 4th of July 1994 whilst in recovery from a lung operation, having failed to disclose a heart problem to his surgeon. The surgeon – who was a friend of Elledge’s – said that if he had known of the problem it could have been addressed as part of the surgery.

Blog: the Capture Site