The camp proper is laid out along the lines similar to those prescribed for the city of Washington, D. C. by Major Henri L'Infant, famous French military engineer. Streets running east to west in neat grid fashion are numbered and the streets crossing to form the squares of the grid are either lettered or bear proper names.

  Troops, however, are not trained in barracks and messhalls nor in the spacious drill fields of Camp Davis alone. Thus the reservation's original plans called for the leasing of approximately 50,000 acres of pine land and swamp surrounding the camp. Here are carried out the hardening maneuvers and the steady firing practices which round out the complete artilleryman. In addition, maneuvers rights extend over nearly 6,000 square miles of territory of all types in a number of adjoining counties. Camp Davis proper is situated in Pender and Onslow Counties, North Carolina.

  The reservation itself extends to the Atlantic Ocean, and along the sandy dunes and in the coves where pirates of the era of Blackbeard once hid their sloops and swaggeringly split their booty, several miles of complicated antiaircraft artillery firing ranges are now in daily use. These center around Sears Landing, a point on the coastal inland waterway. Antiaircraft troops built a bridge across the waterway shortly after the camp was opened and along the ridges of sand thrown up by an eternal surf, the big and little guns of the "AA" constantly mumble their impatience to be at the enemy.

  Camp Davis physically may be likened to a huge military hotel. It was constructed by and is maintained by the Army Service Forces theoretically by utilization by either or both of the Army Ground and Air Forces as a base for training or other military purposes; or it may be used by the Army Service Forces for training or other utilization of their own personnel. In actuality, the Army Service Forces at Camp Davis have always had as their honored "guests" the Coast Artillery initially and the Antiaircraft Artillery in most part and up to the present time.

  The Army Service Forces maintains the camp by use of a Station Complement. This is comprised of some hundreds of troops drawn — for their special functions — from the component branches of the ASE such as the Quartermaster, Engineers, Signal, Medical and Military Police Corps; the Ordnance Department; the Sanitary Corps; the Finance Department and smaller groups of other subdivisions of the Army.

  Camp Davis is named in honor of the late Maj. Gen. Richmond Pearson Davis, whose distinguished military career covered an earlier period of the Nation's history.