Continuing to count the reasons why Carteret County deserves to be designated as a “World War II Heritage Community,” a formal resolution is taking shape to detail talking points, such as:
Whereas No. 6: Denard Davis of Davis Shore to the rescue. The Army men were in a scrape. They couldn’t figure out in 1942 how to move heavy guns to the concrete gun placements at Cape Lookout.
The weight of the guns was too much for their heavy equipment; Caterpillar tractors and bulldozers were mired in the sand.
Some of the local workmen told the Army officers that Denard Davis could move those guns, “and if he couldn’t, they may as well give up.”
Denard Davis was the guy to call if you needed your house or other structure moved in Down East Carteret County throughout much of the early- to mid-1900s. Historian Chuck Lewis said Denard Davis agreed to lend a hand. He showed up one day with his 10-man crew, and his old brown and white horse named Nell. (Maybe she was a mule.)
“He only required a few simple tools,” Lewis said. “He would bring a deadman anchor, some block and tackle, four house jacks, a few rollers, blocks and board and a homemade capstan ‘that looked as if it would fall apart.’”
“Of course, you can imagine how some of those smarty pants soldiers acted when they saw him. Despite the laughing and ridicule, Denard Davis and his crew went to work.” The locals warned the Army brass: “He takes his time. Inch by inch. If you try to rush him, he’ll pack up and say, ‘You finish her.’ And it was hard to get him to come back!”
“In two weeks, the Army’s guns were in place and ready to protect our coast and its ships from the Germans,” Lewis said. “Needless to say, the Army became very fond of Mr. Davis.”
Later, Denard Davis placed guns around Fort Macon,
and the Coast Guard hired him to move an old Coast Guard station from Bogue
Banks by barge to Cedar Point.”
Whereas No. 7: The Army established a super-secret U.S. Army Radar Site, known as Davis Shore Army Camp in 1941 to provide early warning of enemy aircraft and ships approaching the North Carolina coast.
Ed Pond of Davis was 6 years old when the camp was built. He remembered the guard dogs as being “big, loud and mean.” A 150-foot steel tower with a “a box car size metal framework at its top rotated slowly around and around.”
Pond wrote about seeing machine gun nests at each corner of the camp property. “Thick, impenetrable barbed wire entanglements completely surrounded (even out into Core Sound) the perimeter of the Army camp.”
“While the first soldiers coming to set up the Army Camp were supposed to live in their tents, the Davis Shore families would not let that happen,” Pond said, “especially in the spring and summer of 1942, when the salt marsh mosquitoes were the worst ever recalled.”
“Many Davis Shore families adopted a soldier or even two and invited those soldier boys to actually come and live in their houses and eat at their family tables, and the women did the laundry for their live-in soldiers.”
Whereas No. 8: Atlantic in Down East Carteret County became a “military town” in 1942 when Marine Corps Outlying Field Atlantic was established, occupying a 1,469-acre facility within the community. Operated by personnel from Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, it remains a useful training field.
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