Artifact Spotlight: WWII NC Servicemen List
By Matthew M. Peek, Military Collection Archivist, State Archives of North Carolina
When you work to organize and describe the papers and archival collections of individuals and groups, you try to understand the purpose of materials, in order to alert researchers about the items’ significance and preserve the history behind them in descriptions. With military veterans, a lot of the stories behind the materials get lost if there are no captions, notes, or the veterans around themselves to tell you the stories. Every so often, you encounter an item that mostly is self-explanatory. That’s what happened while I was arranging and describing the papers of Harry S. Sloan and his wife Katherine of Raleigh, NC.
Harry Sloan Cathey was born on June 18, 1908, in Charlotte, NC, to Charlton Graham and Martha Theocia Mitchell Cathey. By 1910, the Cathey family was living in the Berryhill suburb of Charlotte, with Charlton Cathey working as a farmer. By 1930, Harry Cathey was working as a shipping clerk for a tire company in the Charlotte area. He attended college for a year, but never finished a degree program. Harry Cathey would marry Emily Katherine Perry on June 20, 1937, in Wake County, NC. Perry had attended college at North Carolina State College in Raleigh, NC, in the early 1930s. The couple settled in Raleigh, where Harry continued working as a shipping clerk for a wholesale tie company and Katherine (as she went by her middle name) worked as a stenographer for the North Carolina State Board of Education. Apparently prior to WWII, Harry Cathey served in the North Carolina National Guard, but his service dates and unit are unknown.
With the United States’ entrance into World War II, Harry S. Cathey enlisted in the U.S. Army, and was inducted at Fort Bragg, NC, on December 5, 1942. Katherine saw her husband off at the Union Square bus station in Raleigh onto the bus taking him to Fort Bragg. At the time, Katherine Cathey was working as a secretary at the North Carolina Office of the Selective Service System in Raleigh.
Just a few days after Christmas in 1942, Harry Cathey was assigned to serve as a Private in Company F, 101st Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadron (Mechanized), U.S. Army, and was sent to Fort Devens, Massachusetts, for training and preparation to be sent to the European Theater. He would not arrive in Europe until November 1944, when he arrived by troop transport ship in Liverpool, England. Cathey arrived in Le Havre, France, in February 1945, and moved through Europe with the 101st Cavalry. Cathey was returned to the United States after V-E Day, arriving in New York City on May 20, 1945. Apparently, he survived a German attack on his tank, while all the other men in the tank perished [though this is a second-hand story, and the exact nature of this incident that led to Cathey being returned so soon to the U.S. is unknown].
Artifact: Fellow North Carolina Servicemen’s List
One artifact that survived in Cathey’s small number of WWII materials is an original typed list of fellow North Carolina servicemen with whom Harry Cathey served or encountered during his time in the U.S. Army in WWII. The list includes the men’s names and home towns in North Carolina. Such lists were commonly kept by North Carolinians in WWII service in diaries, journals, pockets bibles, or other means of recording personal information in service. The list is a simply reminder of the importance, even in wartime, for individuals to connect to some element of home, whether a letter from home, food from home, a song that reminds of home, or meeting people from their home state.
The list also has random handwritten, undated messages from soldiers or by Cathey himself on the front and back of the list.
You can learn more about the Catheys by exploring the Harry and Katherine Cathey Papers (WWII 269) in the WWII Papers of the Military Collection at the State Archives of North Carolina.
Resources
- Harry and Katherine Cathey Papers, WWII 269, WWII Papers, Military Collection, State Archives of North Carolina, Raleigh, N.C. Finding aid available at https://axaem.archives.ncdcr.gov/findingaids/WWII_269_Harry_and_Katherine_Ca_.html
