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Wartime on the Outer Banks R EMEM BER ING L IF E ON T HE NOR T H C AROLINA COA ST DU R I NG WOR L D WA R II Story and photos by Leah Chester-Davis
On a soggy spring morning last year on Ocracoke Island, the clouds gave way to sunrays just as the plaintive tunes of bagpipes beckoned islanders and visitors to a small cemetery. Tucked back on a quiet spot on British Cemetery Road is the plot where four British sailors were laid to rest in 1942. They lost their lives patrolling and defending shipping lanes off the Carolina coast during World War II.
Frieda French and Thomas Cunningham
British sacrifice, remembered
Frieda French
Each year, islanders and visitors gather to remember their sacrifice, and 2017 marked the 75th memorial service. The day before, islanders, special guests and dignitaries had gathered on neighboring Hatteras Island at the Buxton British Cemetery for a memorial observance for two British sailors who washed ashore there during World War II. Unbeknownst to many, German U-boats, or submarines, plied the waters just off the Outer Banks of North Carolina during World War II. Their intent was to disrupt busy sea lanes up and down the Eastern Seaboard, particularly off the coasts of New York, Cape Hatteras and Florida. The Germans sunk nearly 400 merchant vessels headed to England with badly needed food and war material, earning the area the moniker Torpedo Junction and contributing further to the area known as the Graveyard of the Atlantic. U.S. Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall was quoted as saying in June 1942, “The losses by submarines off our Atlantic Seaboard and in the Caribbean now threaten our entire war effort.”
Because the United States was new to the war effort in 1942 and the eastern seaboard was quite vulnerable, the British Royal Navy provided a flotilla of 24 trawlers to patrol the coast for German submarines. The HMT Bedfordshire was one of those ships. On May 11, 1942, it was torpedoed by Chief Homer S. Gray a German submarine and sank about 40 miles south-southeast of Cape Lookout. All of the sailors on the HMT Bedfordshire were killed. The bodies of two, Sub-Lieutenant Cunningham and Ordinary Telegraphist Second Class Craig, washed ashore on Ocracoke. Two other bodies were later found and remain unidentified. Frieda Gray French, now 81, was just six years old at the time. Her father, Homer S. Gray, was chief of the Coast Guard base on Ocracoke. “He was the one they brought the bodies to when they washed up on the shore,” she said. “He helped bury them.” They were buried with military honors. French, who lives in Elizabeth City, traveled to the 75th memorial ceremony to pay respects and to meet Thomas Cunningham, the son of one of the British sailors whom her father buried. She and her daughter, Sharon Stanley, talked about how meaningful the ceremony was. “I really wanted Mom to meet Mr. Cunningham,” Stanley says, looking back on the ceremony. “I thought it was pretty neat that 75 years later the children [of the Coast Guard officer and a British sailor] could meet. People would not believe how much the military and the community did for that memorial service. There were a lot of dignitaries who flew in. It was very impressive.”
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