Ocean Ablaze
War Reaches the Outer Banks
by
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A large pillar of flame flashed high over Currituck Beach and a rumbling carrump rolled inland on a frigid winter night early in 1942. The fire and noise came from a barren sector of North Carolina's Outer Banks, where there was nothing to create such a display for a check schoolboy approaching the post office at Mamie, one of the 20 small post offices strung along the highway running the length of rural Currituck County. The community, about 5 miles inland from the Atlantic, is due west of the then-tiny fishing village of Duck on the Outer Banks. When the boy rushed in to tell the postmaster, Taylor S. Harrell, about the unusual sight, Harrell replied, "Yes, the Germans are sinking our ships right and left out there." "It was open warfare out there" to Melvin Daniels Jr., of Wanchese on Roanoke Island. "The tankers were staying close [to shore] but the Germans would try to catch those tankers in the moonlight and silhouette them some 8, 10, and 2 miles offshore. Several nights the Nags Head Casino would shake with vibration of a torpedo hitting a tanker and then we would rush out to climb Jockey Ridge and see the fire at sea. From Norfolk to Cape Hatteras was truly Torpedo Junction." Daniels, an aspiring pilot, soon joined a Manteo-based Civil Air Patrol squadron covering the ocean along the northern Outer Banks. Paukenschlag [Operation Drumroll], Germany's U-boat offensive against America, struck shipping lanes along America's virtually undefended coast like a thunderbolt. It was the beginning of the United States Navy's worst defeat when, during 1942, U-boats sank more than 800 ships in the western Atlantic waters supposedly guarded by the American Navy. Historian Samuel Morison, on leave from Harvard during World War II to serve in the Naval Historical Division and authored the History of the U.S. Navy in World War IIdescribed the U-boat war in American coastal waters as a defeat for the Navy worse than Pearl Harbor.
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About the Book
Two yellowing envelopes in a long-untouched file, unmistakably of U.S. Army origin but addressed to a North Carolina housewife, caught the attention of her son as he sorted her papers after her death. The postmarks, Virginia Beach, VA., and dated in 1942, were puzzling, as was the official return address: 111th Infantry C.T., Mobile Defense Force. While the 111th regimental combat team could be deciphered, the Mobile Defense Force was not a recognizable term. The letters inside instructed her on the duties of a coast watcher, and evoked memories stored since childhood: The sickening thump of torpedoes striking U.S. ships just off the Currituck Outer Banks and the flare of flames, particularly when a tanker was hit, that were clear even to a youngster on his front porch 8 miles inland. Each boom and pillar of fire revealed that more men were dying in the freezing waters off North Carolina's barrier islands that winter. How did the United States get into such straits that its life was threatened as the Axis juggernauts rolled across Western Europe and Asia? What transpired during the crucial years when the outcome of the war could go against the United States as Axis aggression flooded the Atlantic with U-boats striving to cut the stream of ships laden with weapons, troops, and food flowing to the beleaguered British Isles - the last Allied outpost near the Continent? How did the Allies achieve victory first against the U-boats, then the war, for as Napoleon observed: "It is only a step from victory to disaster. "
About the Author
Skills learned during a forty-five-year career with newspapers and thirty-five years’ service in the Army reserves [cq] melded in providing the tools to research and develop the story involved in the desperate battle off the North Carolina coast during World War II. The newspaper career began in 1951 with the Elizabeth City Daily Advance and continued there after active duty with the Army in 1952-1953 at Fort Benning, GA. Next came a tour at the Goldsboro New-Argus in 1956-1957 before joining The Durham Sun as a reporter. After a five-year tour of reporting, a series of desk jobs began, culminating with a nineteen-year stay in the post of editor of The Durham Sun through 1990. Next was the role of associate editor of The Herald-Sun until retirement in 1996. Service in the Army Reserve and the North Carolina Army National Guard included a four-year reserve tour with the Office of Secretary of the Army Public Affairs Office and the Office of Public Affairs, U.S. Army Material Command, Washington, DC, 1980-1984. Assignments in the reserves included platoon leader and company commander of infantry and signal units and command of supply battalion and support group. Army schools completed during the reserve service were Command and General Staff College, Signal Career Officers Course, and Infantry Company Officers Course. Commissioned second lieutenant in 1952 and retired colonel in 1989. Also attended Currituck County public schools and the University of North Carolina