A few weeks less than a year before the Nation reverberated to the shock of Pearl Harbor — December 26, 1940 to be precise — construction gangs began the creation of Camp Davis.

  Since the first spadeful of earth was turned, Camp Davis — constructed under the direction of and administered by the Army Service Forces — has grown into a huge modern military city. Throughout its existence it has been the base for numerous training and experimental activities of the Antiaircraft and Coast Artilleries. While the Coast Artillery no longer maintains any coastal defense training activity here, the Antiaircraft Artillery — a tremendous offshoot of the Coast Artillery — centers a nucleus of its major training efforts at Camp Davis. Many thousands of troops have streamed away from its portals to the battle zones all over the world.

  In the neighborhood of $40,000,000 has been spent to construct the camp and related installations alone, aside from the cost of training materiel, et cetera. Amid the fever of troops constantly arriving and departing, this military community has gradually taken shape from an almost trackless wilderness to become a monument to engineering skill and patience.

  Lying just under five miles inland from North Carolina's surf-battered Atlantic coast line, Camp Davis is situated approximately 30 miles north of Wilmington, N.C., on U.S. Highway No. 17. The "camp proper" is bounded on the east by the highway for 4.7 miles. A single-rail freight branch of the Atlantic Coast Line Railway also reaches the camp and parallels the highway.

  The camp proper reaches two and a half miles into what was a short time before an almost trackless waste of swamp and boggy trails over which hunters stalked bear and deer and other game. In the camp proper the paths of the nimrods and the morasses of yore have given way to a network of cement highways, orderly streets of barracks and scores of other types of buildings incident to the grim business of a military community in war time.

  More than 3,000 buildings are comprised in the camp. Among the numerous features which provide efficient, utilitarian services for this city of war preparation are a large electric power plant; a central heating plant for the more than 2,000 bed hospital; a large sewage disposal plant; a modern incinerator; and an all embracing water purification plant, all supervised by experts of the United States Army Engineers.