Roll call of Carteret’s ‘fallen heroes’ from late 1941 forward:

Carteret County’s listing of “fallen heroes,” those individuals who died while serving in the military in the 1940s, is headlined by Edwin Bonner McCabe, 25, of the Wildwood community.

U.S. Navy Petty Officer First Class McCabe was among more than 2,400 service members who perished during the Japanese attack on Dec. 7, 1941, at Pearl Harbor near Honolulu on the island of Oahu in Hawaii.

 

Sources at the History Museum of Carteret County in Morehead City said they believe McCabe was the only Carteret County resident to die during the bombings at Pearl Harbor, as reported by the Carteret County News-Times in 2011.

McCabe was assigned to the USS Oklahoma and was aboard the battleship when it was destroyed and sank after suffering at least eight direct hits from torpedoes fired from Japanese aircraft on Dec. 7, 1941. The death toll aboard the Oklahoma (shown below) that day was 429.

 

Edwin McCabe was the son of William Zadock McCabe, a member of the Carteret County Board of Commissioners, and Annie Virginia Teasley McCabe. Edwin McCabe had joined the Navy in 1933, shortly after his graduation from Newport High School, so he had amassed more than eight years of Navy service when he died.

On Dec. 8, 1941 (the day after the assault on Pearl Harbor), U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Congress declared war on Japan. On Dec. 11, 1941, the United States declared war on Germany, marking America’s official involvement in World War II, aligning with the Allied Forces.

 

As previously reported in the Aug. 21, 2024, edition of the News-Times, the first Carteret County man to die during the World War II conflict was Livington Ward Brooks of Harkers Island, who was serving aboard the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Alexander Hamilton (shown below).

 

The vessel was torpedoed by Germany’s U-132 on Jan. 29, 1942, about 28 miles off the coast of Iceland while on “convoy duty.”

Brooks and 31 other Coast Guard crew members were killed, but 81 men from the ship were rescued and survived, including five who hailed from Down East Carteret County. Previously recognized were Dennis Pittman, Hugh Salter and Nathan Robinson.

History museum volunteers have since identified two other local Coast Guardsmen who were among the Alexander Hamilton survivors – Frank Grantham and Clifton Willis. Interestingly, six of the entire crew of 113 were from Carteret County – more than 5%.

This illustrates how Carteret County men were drawn to service in the Coast Guard, a tradition that began with local men enlisting in the old U.S. Life-Saving Service as early as the 1880s.

 

The second Carteret County World War II fatality occurred on March 27, 1942. Coast Guardsman Jesse Daniel Thompson of Otway was one of 141 hands who died aboard the Navy’s Q-ship named the Atik (for a principal star in the constellation Perseus).

The Atik was torpedoed by Germany’s U-123 about 300 miles east of Norfolk, Va., and exploded. There were no survivors.

Thompson was memorialized in 1992, when the North Carolina Department of Transportation authorized a resolution naming the bridge on N.C. Route 101 over Core Creek in Carteret County as the Jesse Daniel Thompson Memorial Bridge.

The Q-ships program was a bold and daring military strategy authorized by President Roosevelt during the early years of World War II.

 
Built in 1912, the Atik began service as Carolyn (shown above), an ordinary merchant ship that carried freight and passengers between the West Indies and ports on the eastern seaboard of the United States. She was not built as a ship of war but accepted her role with valor.